Is a heat pump worth it in Two Rivers?

In Two Rivers, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $3,500 is what Two Rivers 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 $404 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Two Rivers's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

Two Rivers's weather, in the numbers that matter

Two Rivers has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 6242 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 381 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is -2.9°F, against a record low of -8°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.63 for the recommended cold-climate unit. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Two Rivers — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station MANITOWOC COUNTY AIRPORT, 4.7 miles from Two Rivers — the closest one on record.

Two Rivers's running-cost comparison, in dollars

A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 6,010 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,195 a year on electricity. Two Rivers's gas rate of 10.74 per Mcf, applied to the 65 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $791 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 $9,560 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Not every home in Two Rivers has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Two Rivers's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,880 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 4.3 years.

Two Rivers against the rest of the country

Among 3206 cities, Two Rivers's winter puts it at rank 137 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2944 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.

Next step for 11,214 people in Two Rivers

Two Rivers, Wisconsin is home to about 11,214 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 Two Rivers, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.

Reading further on this page's numbers

Every constant behind this page — the 2.63 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Two Rivers's -2.9°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.