Will a heat pump pay off in Glendale, WI?

In Glendale, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,500 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $356 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Glendale's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

How cold Glendale actually gets

Degree days tell the story here: Glendale racks up 5878 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 552 cooling degree days on the cooling side. -2.2°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -9.4°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.65 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Glendale 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, LAWRENCE J TIMMERMAN AIRPORT, 5.4 miles from Glendale.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,617 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,149 a year. That compares with roughly 61 Mcf a year of gas at Glendale's 10.74 per-Mcf rate — about $792 a year — against a local electricity rate of 18.87¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs past the 15-year equipment life, for a 15-year net position $8,843 behind.

Electric resistance heat in Glendale, compared

Not every home in Glendale has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Glendale's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,795 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 4.5 years.

How Glendale compares nationally

Among 3206 cities, Glendale's winter puts it at rank 271 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2466 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.

Deciding what's next in Glendale, WI

Glendale, Wisconsin is home to about 14,381 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 Glendale, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.

Reading further on this page's numbers

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Glendale's 2.65 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Glendale's -2.2°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.