Heat Pump Payback in Batavia, IL
Batavia, IL: the heat pump payback math
Here in Batavia, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. Running costs here land $295 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Batavia's numbers say wait.
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Why Batavia's climate drives this number
Batavia has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment, 5064 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 915 cooling degree days. -7.1°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of -14.1°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.53 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Batavia, below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station Dupage Airport, 5.7 miles from Batavia, the closest one on record.
Batavia's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 5,068 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,115 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 53 Mcf a year at $11.25 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $819 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 19.06¢/kWh). With running costs higher every year, there is no payback at any purchase price; over 15 years, against a like-for-like replacement, a household here would end $9,930 behind.
What would change Batavia's answer
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Batavia if electricity fell to 12.7¢/kWh (from 19.06¢) or gas rose above $16.85 per Mcf (from $11.25). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Batavia, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in Batavia, many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $1,555 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 6.4 years.
Batavia against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Batavia's winter puts it at rank 636 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1506 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.
What to do with this number in Batavia
About 26,555 people live in Batavia, Illinois, 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.
Where Batavia's figure comes from
Every constant behind this page, the 2.53 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Batavia's -7.1°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.