Richfield, WI: the heat pump payback math

Here in Richfield, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Richfield 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 $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.

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 (record low -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 ARPT, 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 — against a local electricity rate of 18.87¢/kWh. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to beyond the 15-year equipment life; over 15 years the net position sits $9,632 behind.

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 4.5-year payback clears the $8,000 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.