Verona, WI: the heat pump payback math
Verona is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. $3,500 is what Verona 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 $403 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Verona's numbers say wait.
Why Verona's climate drives this number
5775 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Verona has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 761 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -9°F here (record low -11°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.48 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Verona — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station DANE CO REGIONAL-TRUAX FIELD, 14.3 miles from Verona — the closest one on record.
Verona's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 5,896 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,235 a year. Verona's gas rate of 10.74 per Mcf, applied to the 60 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $832 a year, against 18.87¢ per kWh for electricity. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to beyond the 15-year equipment life; over 15 years the net position sits $9,545 behind.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Verona — many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Verona's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,710 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 4.7 years.
Where Verona ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Verona comes in at 288 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 2212 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Next step for 16,825 people in Verona
About 16,825 people live in Verona, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Every constant behind this page — the 2.48 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. At a -9°F design temperature, Verona sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.