Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Kenosha, WI
Kenosha is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. $3,500 is what Kenosha 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 $256 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Kenosha's numbers say wait.
The climate behind Kenosha's payback figure
Kenosha has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 5018 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 920 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is -0.9°F, against a record low of -11°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.68 for the recommended cold-climate unit. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Kenosha — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, KENOSHA REGIONAL AIRPORT, 3 miles from Kenosha.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,741 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,043 a year. That compares with roughly 52 Mcf a year of gas at Kenosha's 10.74 per-Mcf rate — about $786 a year — against a local electricity rate of 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 $7,346 behind.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in Kenosha 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. The saving here runs about $1,580 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.1 years.
Where Kenosha ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Kenosha comes in at 674 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 345 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Next step for 99,578 people in Kenosha
About 99,578 people live in Kenosha, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Kenosha's 2.68 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Kenosha's -0.9°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.