Southeast Michigan heats mostly with natural gas at its core, but the region's full heating ledger is messier and more expensive than the gas map suggests. Propane and oil trucks still serve the exurban and rural townships beyond the metro's edge. Electric baseboard hides in converted uppers along the Woodward corridor, attic flats in Ferndale and Royal Oak, and additions across the older suburbs. And aging heat pumps in the postwar rings quietly burn resistance-strip money through every cold snap. This guide runs the conversion arithmetic for each, including the honest gas paragraph that sales pages skip, and notes where the region's live rebate money lands on the same squares.
The Ledger in One Table
| Existing heat | Case for a heat pump | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| Heating oil | Truck-priced fuel loses to metered kilowatt hours moved at two to three times efficiency | Strong |
| Propane | Usually the region's most expensive delivered heat | Strongest |
| Electric resistance | Same meter, a half to a third the consumption, plus a DTE rebate | Strongest |
| Aging heat pump | Modern machine holds capacity through cold snaps, retires the strips | Strong |
| Natural gas | Closest race; usually decided at equipment end of life | Honest maybe |
Delivered Fuel: The Truck Stops Coming
A household buying oil or propane pays for heat in large lumps, a tank fill at a time, at prices that swing with a market it cannot negotiate with. Several hundred gallons a winter is ordinary in the townships beyond the metro's gas mains. A heat pump replaces those gallons with kilowatt hours that move two to three units of heat per unit of electricity, billed monthly at rates that move slowly. The saving shows up for most conversions, and its shape is distinctive: the delivery line disappears entirely, the winter electric bill rises, and the year-total falls.
Electric Resistance: The Case DTE Pays You to Close
Resistance heat, baseboard, ceiling cable, electric furnaces, converts one unit of electricity into one unit of warmth, full price, every hour. A heat pump on the same meter at the same rate moves two to three units of warmth per unit purchased. No fuel forecast, no rate speculation: the same bill simply shrinks toward a half or a third for the heating share. In Metro Detroit this strongest-in-the-guide case carries a unique kicker:. The conversion clears on its own math and then collects for having done so.
The Aging Heat Pump, the Quiet Money Leak
The postwar suburbs hold first-generation heat pumps that were honest machines in their day and are strip-heaters in this one. Below the temperatures where their compressors fade, they hand the load to electric resistance backup, which bills at resistance rates precisely when a cold snap makes the load largest. The bill signature is unmistakable: tolerable shoulder months, brutal cold snaps. A modern variable-speed replacement, specified against published capacity tables in our cold-weather guide, holds its output deep into the cold and retires the strip habit. Owners see similar bills in mild months and meaningfully lower ones in the snaps, which is exactly where the old machine was bleeding.
The Honest Gas Paragraph
A household with a functioning furnace on DTE or Consumers Energy gas faces the closest race in the region, and deserves it stated coldly. Gas is cheap heat in Michigan, and displacing a mid-life furnace rarely pays on fuel savings alone. The conversion cases that clear anyway are calendar cases: the furnace at end of life, where the replacement dollar was being spent regardless; the air conditioner also due, since one machine replaces both; the household that wants off combustion for its own reasons and prices that preference honestly. Dual fuel, a heat pump carrying the season with the furnace held for the deepest nights, is a legitimate configuration a good contractor prices without being asked. What no honest bidder does is promise a gas household dramatic savings; a bid that does has failed the first test in our contractor guide.
Reading the First Winter Correctly
Judge the conversion by shape, not by a single statement. The delivered-fuel convert sees a larger winter electric bill and a smaller year, because the truck line vanished. The resistance convert sees the same warmth cheaper immediately, with the rebate check already banked. The heat pump replacer sees the cold snaps flatten. The discipline that makes all three legible is one ledger: last year's total heating spend, every source, next to this year's, read whole year against whole year each spring. January in isolation is always the wrong number. The year is the verdict, and for oil, propane, and resistance conversions the year wins by a margin no incentive was needed to create.
Renters, Landlords, and the Split Incentive
The metro's most expensive heat disproportionately warms tenants: baseboard in converted uppers along Woodward, tired equipment in two-flats and near-downtown walk-ups, aging systems downriver. The tenant pays the bill; the owner pays for the replacement; and the arithmetic in this guide reads identically for both, with only the beneficiary line changing. The owner's pitch is unusually strong here because the resistance case carries a DTE rebate: a rebate applied to that resistance conversion, on a property that afterward rents better with real cooling and a winter bill a tenant can pay. A tenant's cheapest move is forwarding this page to whoever holds the deed.
The Co-op Footnote
If a co-op sends your bill, one phone call before signing tells you which tier your equipment lands in, and one calendar entry on commissioning day protects the check.
The Short Version
Propane and oil lose to the heat pump on truck-versus-meter arithmetic. Aging heat pumps lose on their strip habit. Functioning gas furnaces make it a fair fight the calendar usually settles. The math carries every case; the checks just arrive faster here than in most of the Midwest.
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