Heat Pump Payback in Glen Carbon, IL
Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Glen Carbon, IL
Glen Carbon 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. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $129 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Glen Carbon's numbers say wait.
Compare against another city
Glen Carbon is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
Why Glen Carbon's climate drives this number
4026 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Glen Carbon has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 1319 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: 1.2°F here (coldest 2024 reading -7.6°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.73 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Glen Carbon sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from St Louis Regional Airport, the closest NOAA station, 9.3 miles out.
Glen Carbon's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 3,734 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $926 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 42 Mcf a year at $11.25 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $798 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 $7,429 behind.
What would change Glen Carbon's answer
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Glen Carbon if electricity fell to 15.0¢/kWh (from 19.06¢) or gas rose above $14.32 per Mcf (from $11.25). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Glen Carbon, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Glen Carbon, many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Glen Carbon's answer improves. About $1,343 a year comes back this way, enough that the 7.4-year payback clears the $10,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
How Glen Carbon compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Glen Carbon comes in at 1490 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 2532 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Deciding what's next in Glen Carbon, IL
About 13,883 people live in Glen Carbon, 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.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Glen Carbon's 2.73 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Glen Carbon's 1.2°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.