Heat Pump Payback in Cedarburg, WI
Is a heat pump worth it in Cedarburg?
Here in Cedarburg, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $5,500 is what Cedarburg would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. The heat pump would cost about $307 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces, a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Cedarburg's numbers say wait.
Compare against another city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Cedarburg. Look one up here.
Why Cedarburg's climate drives this number
5404 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Cedarburg has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 573 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is -0.4°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -7.1°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.69 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Cedarburg needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. These numbers come from Port Washington, the closest NOAA station, 8.1 miles out.
Cedarburg's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,087 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,052 a year. Cedarburg's gas rate of $10.74 per Mcf, applied to the 56 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $745 a year, against 18.87¢ per kWh for electricity. With running costs higher every year, there is no payback at any purchase price; over 15 years, against a like-for-like replacement, a household here would end $10,112 behind.
How sensitive Cedarburg's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Cedarburg if electricity fell to 12.5¢/kWh (from 18.87¢) or gas rose above $16.20 per Mcf (from $10.74). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Cedarburg, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
Electric resistance heat in Cedarburg, compared
Plenty of homes in Cedarburg heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Cedarburg's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,670 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 6 years.
Cedarburg against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Cedarburg's winter puts it at rank 426 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2652 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 Cedarburg
About 13,011 people live in Cedarburg, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Cedarburg's 2.69 seasonal COP and payback figure. Cedarburg's -0.4°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here, see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.