Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Montgomery, IL

In Montgomery, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $3,500 is what Montgomery 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 $339 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. That's Montgomery's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

How cold Montgomery actually gets

Montgomery has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 5330 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 868 cooling degree days. -9°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -15°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.48 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Montgomery sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station AURORA MUNICIPAL AIRPORT, 7.2 miles from Montgomery — the closest one on record.

Montgomery's running-cost comparison, in dollars

Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 5,442 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,178 a year. That compares with roughly 56 Mcf a year of gas at Montgomery's 11.25 per-Mcf rate — about $839 a year — against a local electricity rate of 19.06¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs past the 15-year equipment life, for a 15-year net position $8,591 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Plenty of homes in Montgomery heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. 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 $1,608 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 5 years.

How Montgomery compares nationally

Montgomery lands at position 457 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1788 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Deciding what's next in Montgomery, IL

Montgomery, Illinois is home to about 21,957 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 Montgomery, 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 Montgomery's figure comes from

Every constant behind this page — the 2.48 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Montgomery's -9°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here — see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.