Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Superior, WI

Here in Superior, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,500 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. Running costs here land $653 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Superior's numbers say wait.

Why Superior's climate drives this number

Degree days tell the story here: Superior racks up 7744 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers rarely ask much of an air conditioner, with 188 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -12.1°F here (record low -13.7°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.41 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Superior sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, RICHARD I BONG AIRPORT, 0.7 miles from Superior.

The month-to-month numbers for Superior

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 8,136 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,566 a year. Superior's gas rate of 10.74 per Mcf, applied to the 81 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $912 a year, against 18.87¢ per kWh for electricity. 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 $13,301 behind.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Gas isn't universal in Superior — many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $2,181 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 3.7 years.

Superior against the rest of the country

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Superior comes in at 16 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 1498 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 Superior

About 26,620 people live in Superior, 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.

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

More on how this number was built

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Superior's 2.41 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Superior's -12.1°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here — see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.