Is a heat pump worth it in Moline?

Here in Moline, 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 $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Running costs here land $304 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Moline's numbers say wait.

The climate behind Moline's payback figure

Moline has a real but manageable winter — 4885 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 1062 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is -11°F, against a record low of -18.9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.44 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Moline 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 QUAD CITY INTERNATIONAL AIRPO, the closest NOAA station, 1.9 miles out.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,069 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,139 a year. That compares with roughly 51 Mcf a year of gas at Moline's 11.25 per-Mcf rate — about $835 a year — against a local electricity rate of 19.06¢/kWh. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to beyond the 15-year equipment life; over 15 years the net position sits $8,062 behind.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Gas isn't universal in Moline — 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 $1,481 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.4 years.

Where Moline ranks in this dataset

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Moline comes in at 874 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 973 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Next step for 42,442 people in Moline

About 42,442 people live in Moline, 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 Moline's figure comes from

Every constant behind this page — the 2.44 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Moline's -11°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.