Should Belleville switch to a heat pump?
In Belleville, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,500 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. The heat pump would cost about $74 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Belleville's numbers say wait.
Why Belleville's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Belleville racks up 3677 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1640 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 2.5°F here (record low -3.8°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.76 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Belleville 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. These numbers come from SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE/MIDAMERI, the closest NOAA station, 7.9 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 3,373 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $909 a year on electricity. Belleville's gas rate of 11.25 per Mcf, applied to the 38 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $836 a year, against 19.06¢ per kWh for electricity. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is longer than the 15-year equipment life, leaving the 15-year total $4,604 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Belleville 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. The saving here runs about $1,270 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 6.3 years.
Where Belleville ranks in this dataset
Belleville lands at position 1696 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1013 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
What to do with this number in Belleville
About 40,560 people live in Belleville, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Belleville's 2.76 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Belleville's 2.5°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.