Heat Pump Payback in Richfield, WI
Richfield, WI: the heat pump payback math
Here in Richfield, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $5,500 is what Richfield would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Running costs here land $409 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. That's Richfield's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
Compare against another city
Richfield is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
How cold Richfield actually gets
Richfield has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment, 5993 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers rarely ask much of an air conditioner, at 266 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -4°F here (coldest 2024 reading -9.4°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.6 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Richfield 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. These numbers come from West Bend Municipal Airport, the closest NOAA station, 13.3 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,837 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,144 a year. That compares with roughly 62 Mcf a year of gas at Richfield's $10.74 per-Mcf rate, about $735 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: $11,632 behind after 15 years compared with replacing the furnace and AC like-for-like.
How sensitive Richfield's result is to prices
For the verdict in Richfield to flip, electricity would need to drop to about 11.7¢/kWh from 18.87¢, or gas climb past $17.29 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 Richfield; the case for one here rests on comfort, cooling, or replacing electric heat instead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Richfield heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. About $1,784 a year comes back this way, enough that the 5.6-year payback clears the $10,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Richfield ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Richfield's winter puts it at rank 244 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2846 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.
Deciding what's next in Richfield, WI
Richfield, Wisconsin is home to about 11,783 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 Richfield, 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 2.6 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. At a -4°F design temperature, Richfield sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.