Is a heat pump worth it in Wauwatosa?

Wauwatosa is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. $3,500 is what Wauwatosa 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 $356 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Wauwatosa's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

How cold Wauwatosa actually gets

5878 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Wauwatosa has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 552 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. -2.2°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -9.4°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.65 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Wauwatosa 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. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, LAWRENCE J TIMMERMAN AIRPORT, 3.2 miles from Wauwatosa.

The month-to-month numbers for Wauwatosa

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,617 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,149 a year. Wauwatosa's gas rate of 10.74 per Mcf, applied to the 61 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $792 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 $8,843 behind.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Not every home in Wauwatosa has gas service. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. Switching saves about $1,795 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 4.5 years.

Wauwatosa against the rest of the country

Wauwatosa lands at position 266 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 840 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Next step for 48,794 people in Wauwatosa

Wauwatosa, Wisconsin is home to about 48,794 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 Wauwatosa, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.

Where Wauwatosa's figure comes from

Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Wauwatosa's 2.65 seasonal COP and payback figure. Wauwatosa's -2.2°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.