Heat Pump Payback in Crestwood, IL
Crestwood, IL: the heat pump payback math
Crestwood is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. Running costs here land $151 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Crestwood's numbers say wait.
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Crestwood is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
Why Crestwood's climate drives this number
4543 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Crestwood has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 1348 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 1.9°F here (coldest 2024 reading -9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.75 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Crestwood 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. Source: NOAA station Chicago Midway International Airport, 9.7 miles from Crestwood, the closest one on record.
The yearly running costs in Crestwood
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,183 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,016 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 47 Mcf a year of gas at Crestwood's $11.25 per-Mcf rate, about $865 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 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 Crestwood's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Crestwood 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 Crestwood, 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 Crestwood, many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $1,509 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $10,000 spent up front comes back in about 6.6 years.
Where Crestwood ranks in this dataset
Crestwood lands at position 1173 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 3084 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 Crestwood
About 10,533 people live in Crestwood, 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 Crestwood's figure comes from
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Crestwood's 2.75 seasonal COP and payback figure. Crestwood's 1.9°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.