Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Green Bay, WI
In Green Bay, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $3,500 is what Green Bay 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. Running costs here land $366 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. That's Green Bay's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
How cold Green Bay actually gets
Green Bay has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 5968 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 605 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -2.9°F here (record low -9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.63 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Green Bay sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from AUSTIN STRAUBEL INTERNATIONAL, the closest NOAA station, 8 miles out.
The month-to-month numbers for Green Bay
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,746 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,182 a year. Green Bay's gas rate of 10.74 per Mcf, applied to the 62 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $815 a year, against 18.87¢ per kWh for electricity. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to beyond the 15-year equipment life; over 15 years the net position sits $8,991 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Green Bay has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Green Bay's answer improves. Switching saves about $1,818 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 4.4 years.
How Green Bay compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Green Bay comes in at 246 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 308 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Deciding what's next in Green Bay, WI
Green Bay, Wisconsin is home to about 106,311 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 Green Bay, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
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 Green Bay's 2.63 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Green Bay's -2.9°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.