Heat Pump Payback in Lisbon, WI
Should Lisbon switch to a heat pump?
Lisbon 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. The heat pump would cost about $438 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces, a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Lisbon's numbers say wait.
Checking a different city
Landed on Lisbon by mistake, or want to compare it against somewhere else? Search the other 3206 cities below.
Why Lisbon's climate drives this number
Lisbon has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment, 6294 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 394 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -5.8°F here (coldest 2024 reading -11.2°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.56 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Lisbon, 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, Waukesha County Airport, 8.1 miles from Lisbon.
The yearly running costs in Lisbon
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 6,225 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,238 a year. That compares with roughly 66 Mcf a year of gas at Lisbon's $10.74 per-Mcf rate, about $800 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 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 $12,067 behind.
The break-even point in Lisbon
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Lisbon if electricity fell to 11.6¢/kWh (from 18.87¢) or gas rose above $17.42 per Mcf (from $10.74). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Lisbon, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in Lisbon 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 $1,866 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 5.4 years.
Where Lisbon ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Lisbon comes in at 123 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 2962 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 if you live in Lisbon
About 11,127 people live in Lisbon, 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.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Every constant behind this page, the 2.56 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. At a -5.8°F design temperature, Lisbon sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.