Heat Pump Payback in Green Bay, WI
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. $5,500 is what Green Bay would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. 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.
Checking a different city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Green Bay. Look one up here.
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 (coldest 2024 reading -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 yearly running costs in 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 the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $815 a year, against 18.87¢ per kWh for electricity. Because the heat pump costs more to run here, the gap only widens with time: $10,991 behind after 15 years compared with replacing the furnace and AC like-for-like.
How sensitive Green Bay's result is to prices
For the verdict in Green Bay to flip, electricity would need to drop to about 12.2¢/kWh from 18.87¢, or gas climb past $16.63 per Mcf from $10.74. A utility offering a lower heat pump rate can change this. Until then, no quote price makes a heat pump pay back against gas in Green Bay; the case for one here rests on comfort, cooling, or replacing electric heat instead.
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 $10,000 spent up front comes back in about 5.5 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.