Heat Pump Payback in Morris, IL
Morris, IL: the heat pump payback math
Morris is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $291 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Morris's numbers say wait.
Compare against another city
Landed on Morris by mistake, or want to compare it against somewhere else? Search the other 3206 cities below.
Why Morris's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Morris racks up 5035 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 896 cooling degree days on the cooling side. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is -6.7°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -13°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.54 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Morris sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Mors Muni-J.R. Wsbrn Fd AP, 3.1 miles from Morris.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,019 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,102 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 52 Mcf a year at $11.25 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $811 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 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 $9,866 behind.
How sensitive Morris's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Morris if electricity fell to 12.8¢/kWh (from 19.06¢) or gas rose above $16.80 per Mcf (from $11.25). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Morris, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
Electric resistance heat in Morris, compared
Not every home in Morris has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $1,549 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 6.5 years.
Morris against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Morris's winter puts it at rank 657 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2432 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 Morris
About 14,587 people live in Morris, 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.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Where Morris's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Morris's 2.54 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Morris's -6.7°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.