Heat Pump Payback in Moline, IL
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 $5,500 more up front here. 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.
Compare against another city
Moline is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
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, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -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 with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 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 $10,062 behind.
How sensitive Moline's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Moline if electricity fell to 12.4¢/kWh (from 19.06¢) or gas rose above $17.23 per Mcf (from $11.25). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Moline, 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 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 $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 6.8 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 if you live 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.