Is a heat pump worth it in Marinette?
Here in Marinette, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $412 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Marinette's numbers say wait.
Why Marinette's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Marinette racks up 6361 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 389 cooling degree days on the cooling side. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is -2.9°F, against a record low of -9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.63 for the recommended cold-climate unit. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Marinette — 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, MEONE-MARINETTE TWIN CO AP, 2.1 miles from Marinette.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 6,124 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,218 a year. Marinette's gas rate of 10.74 per Mcf, applied to the 66 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $807 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 $9,674 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Marinette has gas service. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. About $1,916 a year comes back this way, enough that the 4.2-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Marinette ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Marinette comes in at 104 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 2959 by population, where 1 is largest. 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 Marinette
About 11,139 people live in Marinette, 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.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Marinette's 2.63 seasonal COP and payback figure. At a -2.9°F design temperature, Marinette sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.