Hudson, WI: the heat pump payback math
Hudson is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. $3,500 is what Hudson 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 $531 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Hudson's numbers say wait.
Why Hudson's climate drives this number
6726 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Hudson has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 406 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -10.7°F here (record low -11.4°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.44 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, Hudson sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from NEW RICHMOND MUNICIPAL APT, the closest NOAA station, 16.1 miles out.
Hudson's running-cost comparison, in dollars
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 6,980 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,382 a year on electricity. Hudson's gas rate of 10.74 per Mcf, applied to the 70 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $852 a year, against 18.87¢ per kWh for electricity. 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 $11,462 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Hudson heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $1,931 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 4.1 years.
Where Hudson ranks in this dataset
Hudson lands at position 56 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2391 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.
Deciding what's next in Hudson, WI
About 15,031 people live in Hudson, 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
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Hudson's 2.44 seasonal COP and payback figure. At a -10.7°F design temperature, Hudson sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.