Is a heat pump worth it in Pekin?

In Pekin, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $3,500 is what Pekin 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. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $209 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Pekin's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

Pekin's weather, in the numbers that matter

Pekin has a real but manageable winter — 4554 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 1292 cooling degree days. -5.1°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -13°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.58 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Pekin sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from GREATER PEORIA REGIONAL AIRPO, the closest NOAA station, 7.5 miles out.

Pekin's running-cost comparison, in dollars

A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,470 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,062 a year on electricity. Pekin's gas rate of 11.25 per Mcf, applied to the 47 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $853 a year, against 19.06¢ per kWh for electricity. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is longer than the 15-year equipment life, leaving the 15-year total $6,637 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Plenty of homes in Pekin 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. About $1,455 a year comes back this way, enough that the 5.5-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.

Pekin against the rest of the country

Pekin lands at position 1128 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1310 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.

Deciding what's next in Pekin, IL

Pekin, Illinois is home to about 31,266 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 Pekin, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.

Where Pekin's figure comes from

Every constant behind this page — the 2.58 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. At a -5.1°F design temperature, Pekin sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.