Is a heat pump worth it in Des Plaines?

Here in Des Plaines, 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 $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). The heat pump would cost about $240 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. That's Des Plaines's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

How cold Des Plaines actually gets

4837 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Des Plaines has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 1162 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: -5.1°F here (record low -9.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.58 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Des Plaines — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. These numbers come from CHICAGO O'HARE INTERNATIONAL, the closest NOAA station, 5.4 miles out.

The month-to-month numbers for Des Plaines

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 4,747 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,094 a year. That compares with roughly 50 Mcf a year of gas at Des Plaines's 11.25 per-Mcf rate — about $854 a year — against a local electricity rate of 19.06¢/kWh. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to beyond the 15-year equipment life; over 15 years the net position sits $7,099 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Plenty of homes in Des Plaines heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $1,528 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 5.2 years.

Des Plaines against the rest of the country

Among 3206 cities, Des Plaines's winter puts it at rank 904 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 690 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.

Next step for 58,832 people in Des Plaines

Des Plaines, Illinois is home to about 58,832 people, and the figures above are the same ones a local HVAC contractor uses to size and quote a system — this site doesn't guess where a real quote would land, it just tells you whether it's worth asking for one. In Des Plaines, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.

More on how this number was built

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Des Plaines's 2.58 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a -5.1°F design temperature, Des Plaines sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.