Heating and cooling cost in Atlanta, GA

What does it cost to heat and cool a home in Atlanta?

A planning year in Atlanta costs about $1,020 to heat the example home with gas, about $1,120 to heat it with a heat pump, and about $640 to cool it. These are not install prices and they are not your utility bill. They exist so a furnace quote and a heat-pump quote can be read next to a year of energy, instead of next to a brochure. The example home is about 2,000 square feet, built around 1986. frame houses, some crawlspaces, humid summers, tree cover

The arithmetic, in the open

Gas therms equal heating degree days times square feet times 0.00012. For this house that is 2,820 times 2,000 times 0.00012, about 677 therms. Therms are priced at $1.50 a therm, which you can change in the bar. Wellholt does not have a Atlanta gas tariff, so it will not invent one. Heat-pump kilowatt-hours take those therms, convert at 29.3 kilowatt-hours per therm, and divide by 2.6, a planning efficiency, not a nameplate. That is about 7,627 kilowatt-hours, priced at the city’s 14.7¢. Cooling kilowatt-hours equal cooling degree days times square feet times 0.0012, about 4,344 kilowatt-hours at the same rate. A tighter house, a worse house, or a different thermostat will not match this. The low column is 85 percent of the planning year. The high column is 120 percent for heat and 125 percent for cooling, a stand-in for a harder weather year, not a repair.

Why Atlanta is not a national bill

The national reference year is about 4,000 heating degree days and 1,400 cooling degree days. Atlanta is zone 3A, with 2,820 and 1,810. Electricity at 14.7¢ is below the 16.8¢ reference, and it hits the heat pump and the cooling line. It does not hit the gas line, because gas uses $1.50 a therm from the bar instead of a made-up local tariff. Georgia Power is the common utility. Rates sit a little under the national planning figure.

How to use this next to a quote

A ducted heat pump in Atlanta costs more to install than a gas furnace. The furnace page has those stickers. This page only has the year after. If gas heat is $1,020 and heat-pump heat is $1,120, the difference is $110 a year, in favor of gas on energy alone. That comparison ignores the cooling the heat pump also does, which is the $640 line, and it ignores maintenance. Do not divide an install gap by this difference and call it a payback unless both houses are the one you live in. Atlanta labor is near or slightly under national, with a real cooling season and a non-trivial winter. Crawlspaces, red clay, and trees over the condenser are the access story. In-town bungalows do not match the 1980s subdivision this page treats as typical. ITP versus OTP is a rent story more than an equipment-price story.

What this will not do

It will not read your meter. It will not apply a time-of-use rate, a gas utility’s winter slope, or a budget-billing plan that hides the summer. It will not tell a renter to replace a furnace. A renter can use it to understand why a cheap rent in a hot city is not a cheap year, and why a cold city with a low electric rate is a different problem from a cold city with a high one. Set your own square footage before you treat 2,000 as your house.

Reviewed 2026-09-01. Planning model: IECC climate zone, degree-day normals, a metro labor factor, and a residential rate used only for operating-cost context. Installed costs start from published national ranges and scale the labor share. Rents are planning medians, not listings. Reviewed 2026-09-01. If a salesperson quotes a yearly savings with no degree days and no rate, ask them to write both down next to these. The planning year here is gas $1,020, heat pump $1,120, cooling $640, for about 2,000 square feet in Atlanta.