Is a heat pump worth it in Sheboygan?

In Sheboygan, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $3,500 is what Sheboygan 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. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $406 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Sheboygan's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

How cold Sheboygan actually gets

6236 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Sheboygan has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 511 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. -4°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -9.9°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.6 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Sheboygan sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, SHEBOYGAN CO MEMO AIRPORT, 6.3 miles from Sheboygan.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 6,073 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,228 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 65 Mcf a year at 10.74 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $822 a year (electricity here runs 18.87¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is longer than the 15-year equipment life, leaving the 15-year total $9,586 behind.

Electric resistance heat in Sheboygan, compared

Not every home in Sheboygan has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $1,876 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 4.3 years.

Sheboygan against the rest of the country

Among 3206 cities, Sheboygan's winter puts it at rank 138 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 825 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 Sheboygan, WI

Sheboygan, Wisconsin is home to about 49,624 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 Sheboygan, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.

Where Sheboygan's figure comes from

Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Sheboygan's 2.6 seasonal COP and payback figure. Sheboygan's -4°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.