Burlington, WI: the heat pump payback math
Here in Burlington, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Burlington would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again, once the $2,000 federal credit is applied. The heat pump would cost about $335 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. That's Burlington's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
Burlington's weather, in the numbers that matter
Burlington has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 5492 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 538 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is -2.4°F, against a record low of -25.1°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.64 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Burlington sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from BURLINGTON MUNICIPAL ARPT, the closest NOAA station, 1.9 miles out.
Burlington's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 5,268 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,081 a year. That compares with roughly 57 Mcf a year of gas at Burlington's 10.74 per-Mcf rate — about $746 a year — against a local electricity rate of 18.87¢/kWh. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is longer than the 15-year equipment life, leaving the 15-year total $8,520 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in Burlington — 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 $1,675 a year comes back this way, enough that the 4.8-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
How Burlington compares nationally
Among 3206 cities, Burlington's winter puts it at rank 386 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2997 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.
Next step for 10,939 people in Burlington
Burlington, Wisconsin is home to about 10,939 people, and the figures above are the same ones a local HVAC contractor uses to size and quote a system — this site doesn't guess where a real quote would land, it just tells you whether it's worth asking for one. In Burlington, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Burlington's 2.64 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a -2.4°F design temperature, Burlington sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.