Heat Pump Payback in Bridgeview, IL
Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Bridgeview, IL
Bridgeview is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. $5,500 is what Bridgeview would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $151 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Bridgeview's numbers say wait.
Not the city you meant?
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Bridgeview. Look one up here.
Why Bridgeview's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Bridgeview racks up 4543 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1348 cooling degree days on the cooling side. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is 1.9°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.75 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Bridgeview 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, Chicago Midway International Airport, 4.2 miles from Bridgeview.
Bridgeview's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,183 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,016 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 47 Mcf a year at $11.25 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $865 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 $7,767 behind.
How sensitive Bridgeview's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Bridgeview if electricity fell to 14.8¢/kWh (from 19.06¢) or gas rose above $14.44 per Mcf (from $11.25). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Bridgeview, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Bridgeview has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. About $1,509 a year comes back this way, enough that the 6.6-year payback clears the $10,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
How Bridgeview compares nationally
Bridgeview lands at position 1160 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2239 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Next step if you live in Bridgeview
About 16,559 people live in Bridgeview, 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Where Bridgeview's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Bridgeview's 2.75 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Bridgeview's 1.9°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.