Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Oshkosh, WI
Here in Oshkosh, 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). Running costs here land $377 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Oshkosh's numbers say wait.
The climate behind Oshkosh's payback figure
Oshkosh has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 5879 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 643 cooling degree days. -5.1°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -9°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.58 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Oshkosh — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. These numbers come from WHITTMAN REGIONAL AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 2.7 miles out.
Oshkosh's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,770 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,192 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 61 Mcf a year at 10.74 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $815 a year (electricity here runs 18.87¢/kWh). 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 $9,161 behind.
Electric resistance heat in Oshkosh, compared
Not every home in Oshkosh 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. The saving here runs about $1,774 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 4.5 years.
Oshkosh against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Oshkosh comes in at 264 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 580 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 Oshkosh
About 67,242 people live in Oshkosh, 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
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Oshkosh's 2.58 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Oshkosh's -5.1°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.