Should Worth switch to a heat pump?

Here in Worth, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Worth 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. Running costs here land $151 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Worth's numbers say wait.

The climate behind Worth's payback figure

4543 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Worth has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 1348 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. 1.9°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -9°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.75 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Worth sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from CHICAGO MIDWAY INTL ARPT, the closest NOAA station, 7.1 miles out.

Worth's running-cost comparison, in dollars

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 4,183 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,016 a year. That compares with roughly 47 Mcf a year of gas at Worth's 11.25 per-Mcf rate — about $865 a year — against a local electricity rate of 19.06¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs past the 15-year equipment life, for a 15-year net position $5,767 behind.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Plenty of homes in Worth heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Worth's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,509 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.3 years.

How Worth compares nationally

Among 3206 cities, Worth's winter puts it at rank 1172 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 3055 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.

What to do with this number in Worth

About 10,660 people live in Worth, 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

Every constant behind this page — the 2.75 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. At a 1.9°F design temperature, Worth sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.