Heat Pump Payback in Kaukauna, WI
Is a heat pump worth it in Kaukauna?
Kaukauna is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $5,500. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $332 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Kaukauna's numbers say wait.
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Kaukauna is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
Why Kaukauna's climate drives this number
5716 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Kaukauna has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 707 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is -2.2°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -7.6°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.65 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Kaukauna 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, Outagamie Co Regional Airport, 12.5 miles from Kaukauna.
Kaukauna's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 5,462 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,144 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 60 Mcf a year at $10.74 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $812 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 18.87¢/kWh). With running costs higher every year, there is no payback at any purchase price; over 15 years, against a like-for-like replacement, a household here would end $10,482 behind.
What would change Kaukauna's answer
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Kaukauna if electricity fell to 12.4¢/kWh (from 18.87¢) or gas rose above $16.32 per Mcf (from $10.74). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Kaukauna, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
Electric resistance heat in Kaukauna, compared
Not every home in Kaukauna has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Kaukauna's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,760 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.7 years.
Kaukauna against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Kaukauna's winter puts it at rank 309 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2061 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.
What to do with this number in Kaukauna
About 18,363 people live in Kaukauna, 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.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Where Kaukauna's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Kaukauna's 2.65 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Kaukauna's -2.2°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.