Heat Pump Payback in Melrose Park, IL
Should Melrose Park switch to a heat pump?
Melrose Park is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. $5,500 is what Melrose 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: Melrose Park's numbers say wait.
Not the city you meant?
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Melrose Park. Look one up here.
Why Melrose Park's climate drives this number
Melrose Park has a real but manageable winter, 4837 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 1162 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -5.1°F here (coldest 2024 reading -9.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.58 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Melrose 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, 5.3 miles out.
The yearly running costs in Melrose Park
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. Melrose Park's gas rate of $11.25 per Mcf, applied to the 50 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $854 a year, against 19.06¢ per kWh for electricity. 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.
What would change Melrose Park's answer
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Melrose 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 Melrose Park, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in Melrose Park, many houses run on electric heat already. Against electric-resistance heat, baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance, the case for switching gets stronger here. The saving here runs about $1,528 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 6.5 years.
Where Melrose Park ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Melrose Park comes in at 914 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 1660 by population, where 1 is largest. 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 Melrose Park
About 23,999 people live in Melrose 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page, the 2.58 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Melrose Park's -5.1°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.