Heat Pump Payback in Franklin Park, IL
Franklin Park, IL: the heat pump payback math
In Franklin Park, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $5,500 is what Franklin Park would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. The heat pump would cost about $240 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces, a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Franklin Park's numbers say wait.
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Landed on Franklin Park by mistake, or want to compare it against somewhere else? Search the other 3206 cities below.
Why Franklin Park's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Franklin Park racks up 4837 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1162 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 -9.9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.58 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Franklin Park 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 Chicago O'Hare International, the closest NOAA station, 3.2 miles out.
The yearly running costs in Franklin Park
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,747 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,094 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 50 Mcf a year at $11.25 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $854 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 $9,099 behind.
How sensitive Franklin Park's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Franklin Park if electricity fell to 13.4¢/kWh (from 19.06¢) or gas rose above $16.01 per Mcf (from $11.25). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Franklin Park, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
Electric resistance heat in Franklin Park, compared
Not every home in Franklin Park 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. About $1,528 a year comes back this way, enough that the 6.5-year payback clears the $10,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Franklin Park against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Franklin Park's winter puts it at rank 922 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2083 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.
What to do with this number in Franklin Park
About 18,110 people live in Franklin Park, 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.
Where Franklin Park's figure comes from
Every constant behind this page, the 2.58 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Franklin Park'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.