Streamwood, IL: the heat pump payback math

Here in Streamwood, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Streamwood 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 $295 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Streamwood's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

Streamwood's weather, in the numbers that matter

Degree days tell the story here: Streamwood racks up 5064 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 915 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 -7.1°F, against a record low of -14.1°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.53 for the recommended cold-climate unit. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Streamwood — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station DUPAGE AIRPORT, 8.2 miles from Streamwood — the closest one on record.

Streamwood's running-cost comparison, in dollars

A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 5,068 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,115 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 53 Mcf a year of gas at Streamwood's 11.25 per-Mcf rate — about $819 a year — against a local electricity rate of 19.06¢/kWh. 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 $7,930 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Plenty of homes in Streamwood 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. Switching saves about $1,555 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 5.1 years.

Streamwood against the rest of the country

Among 3206 cities, Streamwood's winter puts it at rank 629 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1079 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 Streamwood

Streamwood, Illinois is home to about 38,360 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 Streamwood, 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 Streamwood's figure comes from

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Streamwood's 2.53 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a -7.1°F design temperature, Streamwood sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.