Heat Pump Payback in Marquette, MI
Should Marquette switch to a heat pump?
Marquette is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. The heat pump would cost about $683 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces, a premium with no payback. That's Marquette's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
Compare against another city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Marquette. Look one up here.
How cold Marquette actually gets
Marquette has one of the harshest winters in the country, 7691 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers rarely ask much of an air conditioner, at 206 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is -5.8°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -9.4°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.56 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Marquette sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station Sawyer International Apt, 13.9 miles from Marquette, the closest one on record.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 7,607 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,613 a year. That compares with roughly 80 Mcf a year of gas at Marquette's $10.92 per-Mcf rate, about $930 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 20.72¢/kWh. Because the heat pump costs more to run here, the gap only widens with time: $15,739 behind after 15 years compared with replacing the furnace and AC like-for-like.
How sensitive Marquette's result is to prices
For the verdict in Marquette to flip, electricity would need to drop to about 11.6¢/kWh from 20.72¢, or gas climb past $19.44 per Mcf from $10.92. A utility offering a lower heat pump rate can change this. Until then, no quote price makes a heat pump pay back against gas in Marquette; the case for one here rests on comfort, cooling, or replacing electric heat instead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in Marquette, many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Marquette's answer improves. Switching saves about $2,478 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 4 years.
How Marquette compares nationally
Marquette lands at position 20 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1796 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.
Next step if you live in Marquette
Marquette, Michigan is home to about 21,845 people, and the figures above are the same ones a local HVAC contractor uses to size and quote a system, this site doesn't guess where a real quote would land, it just tells you whether it's worth asking for one. In Marquette, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
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, Marquette sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.