Is a heat pump worth it in Beloit?
In Beloit, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Running costs here land $334 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Beloit's numbers say wait.
The climate behind Beloit's payback figure
5393 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Beloit has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 828 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. -5.8°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -14.8°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.56 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Beloit — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, ROCK COUNTY AIRPORT, 6.5 miles from Beloit.
Beloit's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,334 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,140 a year. Beloit's gas rate of 10.74 per Mcf, applied to the 56 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $806 a year, against 18.87¢ per kWh for electricity. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to beyond the 15-year equipment life; over 15 years the net position sits $8,511 behind.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Beloit — many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. About $1,640 a year comes back this way, enough that the 4.9-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Beloit ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Beloit's winter puts it at rank 432 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1128 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
What to do with this number in Beloit
About 36,633 people live in Beloit, Wisconsin, and every number on this page is what a contractor would actually work from when quoting a system here — the point isn't to replace that quote, it's to tell you whether to bother asking for one. Here, there's no cost penalty to waiting until your current furnace or AC actually needs replacing.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Beloit's 2.56 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a -5.8°F design temperature, Beloit sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.