Heat Pump Payback in Shorewood, IL
Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Shorewood, IL
In Shorewood, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $5,500 is what Shorewood would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. The heat pump would cost about $235 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces, a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Shorewood's numbers say wait.
Compare against another city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Shorewood. Look one up here.
The climate behind Shorewood's payback figure
4733 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Shorewood has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 1089 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is -4.4°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -10.3°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.59 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Shorewood 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. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Joliet Regional Airport, 2.8 miles from Shorewood.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,627 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,059 a year. Shorewood's gas rate of $11.25 per Mcf, applied to the 49 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $824 a year, against 19.06¢ per kWh for electricity. 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 $9,031 behind.
How sensitive Shorewood's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Shorewood if electricity fell to 13.4¢/kWh (from 19.06¢) or gas rose above $16.03 per Mcf (from $11.25). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Shorewood, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
Electric resistance heat in Shorewood, compared
Gas isn't universal in Shorewood, many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Shorewood's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,494 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 6.7 years.
Where Shorewood ranks in this dataset
Shorewood lands at position 998 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2052 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.
Next step if you live in Shorewood
About 18,522 people live in Shorewood, 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.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Shorewood's 2.59 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Shorewood's -4.4°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.