Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Glen Ellyn, IL
Glen Ellyn is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. $3,500 is what Glen Ellyn would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again, once the $2,000 federal credit is applied. Running costs here land $240 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. That's Glen Ellyn's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
Glen Ellyn's weather, in the numbers that matter
4837 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Glen Ellyn 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. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Glen Ellyn sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from CHICAGO O'HARE INTERNATIONAL, the closest NOAA station, 9.3 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
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 (electricity here runs 19.06¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is longer than the 15-year equipment life, leaving the 15-year total $7,099 behind.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Glen Ellyn has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Glen Ellyn's answer improves. About $1,528 a year comes back this way, enough that the 5.2-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Glen Ellyn ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Glen Ellyn's winter puts it at rank 913 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1389 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 Glen Ellyn
Glen Ellyn, Illinois is home to about 28,872 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 Glen Ellyn, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Where Glen Ellyn's figure comes from
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Glen Ellyn's 2.58 seasonal COP and payback figure. Glen Ellyn's -5.1°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.