Menasha, WI: the heat pump payback math
Here in Menasha, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Menasha 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 $332 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Menasha's numbers say wait.
The climate behind Menasha's payback figure
5716 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Menasha 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. -2.2°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -7.6°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.65 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Menasha sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from OUTAGAMIE CO RGNL AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 5.8 miles out.
Menasha's running-cost comparison, in dollars
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 5,462 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,144 a year on electricity. Menasha's gas rate of 10.74 per Mcf, applied to the 60 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $812 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 $8,482 behind.
Electric resistance heat in Menasha, compared
Plenty of homes in Menasha heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Menasha's answer improves. About $1,760 a year comes back this way, enough that the 4.5-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Menasha ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Menasha comes in at 308 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 2057 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 18,433 people in Menasha
About 18,433 people live in Menasha, 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
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Menasha's 2.65 seasonal COP and payback figure. At a -2.2°F design temperature, Menasha sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.