Is a heat pump worth it in Cudahy?

Here in Cudahy, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Cudahy 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 $298 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. That's Cudahy's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

How cold Cudahy actually gets

5229 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Cudahy has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 806 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 -2.9°F, against a record low of -5.1°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.63 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Cudahy 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. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, GENERAL MITCHELL INTERNATIONA, 2.2 miles from Cudahy.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,034 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,080 a year. That compares with roughly 54 Mcf a year of gas at Cudahy's 10.74 per-Mcf rate — about $782 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 $7,965 behind.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Gas isn't universal in Cudahy — many houses run on electric heat already. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. About $1,616 a year comes back this way, enough that the 5-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.

How Cudahy compares nationally

Cudahy lands at position 545 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2123 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Deciding what's next in Cudahy, WI

Cudahy, Wisconsin is home to about 17,704 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 Cudahy, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.

More on how this number was built

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Cudahy's 2.63 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a -2.9°F design temperature, Cudahy sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.