Heat Pump Payback in Monroe, WI
Monroe, WI: the heat pump payback math
Monroe 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 $354 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces, a premium with no payback. That's Monroe's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
Compare against another city
Monroe is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
How cold Monroe actually gets
Monroe has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment, 5648 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 716 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -4.9°F here (coldest 2024 reading -13°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.58 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Monroe needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. Source: NOAA station Monroe Municipal Airport, 2.5 miles from Monroe, the closest one on record.
Monroe's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 5,543 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,161 a year. That compares with roughly 59 Mcf a year of gas at Monroe's $10.74 per-Mcf rate, about $807 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 18.87¢/kWh. Because the heat pump costs more to run here, the gap only widens with time: $10,815 behind after 15 years compared with replacing the furnace and AC like-for-like.
The break-even point in Monroe
For the verdict in Monroe to flip, electricity would need to drop to about 12.1¢/kWh from 18.87¢, or gas climb past $16.76 per Mcf from $10.74. 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 Monroe; the case for one here rests on comfort, cooling, or replacing electric heat instead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Monroe, many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. About $1,713 a year comes back this way, enough that the 5.8-year payback clears the $10,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Monroe ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Monroe's winter puts it at rank 331 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 3073 for population, 1 in both cases being the extreme. 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 Monroe
Monroe, Wisconsin is home to about 10,579 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 Monroe, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Monroe's 2.58 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Monroe's -4.9°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.