Heat Pump Payback in East Peoria, IL
Will a heat pump pay off in East Peoria, IL?
Here in East Peoria, 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. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $209 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: East Peoria's numbers say wait.
Checking a different city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just East Peoria. Look one up here.
The climate behind East Peoria's payback figure
Degree days tell the story here: East Peoria racks up 4554 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1292 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 -5.1°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -13°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.58 for the recommended cold-climate unit. A cold-climate unit is the right call in East Peoria, below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Greater Peoria Regional Airpo, 7.5 miles from East Peoria.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,470 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,062 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 47 Mcf a year at $11.25 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $853 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 $8,637 behind.
How sensitive East Peoria's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in East Peoria if electricity fell to 13.7¢/kWh (from 19.06¢) or gas rose above $15.66 per Mcf (from $11.25). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in East Peoria, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in East Peoria heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Against electric-resistance heat, baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance, the case for switching gets stronger here. About $1,455 a year comes back this way, enough that the 6.9-year payback clears the $10,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
How East Peoria compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, East Peoria comes in at 1129 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 1779 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
What to do with this number in East Peoria
About 22,024 people live in East Peoria, 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 East Peoria's figure comes from
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind East Peoria's 2.58 seasonal COP and payback figure. East Peoria's -5.1°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.