Fort Atkinson, WI: the heat pump payback math
In Fort Atkinson, 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: Fort Atkinson's numbers say wait.
The climate behind Fort Atkinson's payback figure
Fort Atkinson has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 5393 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 828 cooling degree days. -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. Fort Atkinson 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. Source: NOAA station ROCK COUNTY AIRPORT, 23.2 miles from Fort Atkinson — the closest one on record.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
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. That compares with roughly 56 Mcf a year of gas at Fort Atkinson's 10.74 per-Mcf rate — about $806 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 $8,511 behind.
Electric resistance heat in Fort Atkinson, compared
Plenty of homes in Fort Atkinson heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Fort Atkinson's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,640 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 4.9 years.
Where Fort Atkinson ranks in this dataset
Fort Atkinson lands at position 434 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2751 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.
What to do with this number in Fort Atkinson
About 12,377 people live in Fort Atkinson, 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.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Fort Atkinson's 2.56 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Fort Atkinson's -5.8°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.