Should North Chicago switch to a heat pump?
Here in North Chicago, 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). The heat pump would cost about $269 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: North Chicago's numbers say wait.
Why North Chicago's climate drives this number
North Chicago has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 5324 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 777 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is -0.9°F, against a record low of -11°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.68 for the recommended cold-climate unit. North Chicago 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. Source: NOAA station WAUKEGAN REGIONAL AIRPORT, 6.9 miles from North Chicago — the closest one on record.
North Chicago's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 5,030 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,085 a year. North Chicago's gas rate of 11.25 per Mcf, applied to the 55 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $816 a year, against 19.06¢ per kWh for electricity. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to beyond the 15-year equipment life; over 15 years the net position sits $7,540 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in North Chicago — many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and North Chicago's answer improves. About $1,676 a year comes back this way, enough that the 4.8-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
North Chicago against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, North Chicago comes in at 462 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 1331 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 North Chicago
About 30,639 people live in North Chicago, 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.
Where North Chicago's figure comes from
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind North Chicago's 2.68 seasonal COP and payback figure. North Chicago's -0.9°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.