Should Holmen switch to a heat pump?
In Holmen, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $3,500 is what Holmen 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 $381 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Holmen's numbers say wait.
The climate behind Holmen's payback figure
Degree days tell the story here: Holmen racks up 5707 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 807 cooling degree days on the cooling side. -8°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -11.9°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.51 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Holmen — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station LA CROSSE MUNICIPAL AIRPORT, 6.4 miles from Holmen — the closest one on record.
The month-to-month numbers for Holmen
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 5,757 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,216 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 59 Mcf a year at 10.74 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $836 a year (electricity here runs 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 $9,208 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in Holmen — 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. Switching saves about $1,708 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 4.7 years.
Where Holmen ranks in this dataset
Holmen lands at position 315 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2829 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.
Next step for 11,866 people in Holmen
About 11,866 people live in Holmen, 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page — the 2.51 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Holmen's -8°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.