Atlanta, GA: the heat pump payback math
Atlanta sits right on the fence — how long you'll own the house decides this one. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Atlanta's residents would see roughly $343 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 10.2 years. Whether that's worth it in Atlanta depends on how many years you expect to own the place.
The climate behind Atlanta's payback figure
Atlanta has a mild winter by US standards — 2436 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 1996 cooling degree days. 12°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 12°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.99 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Atlanta sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from FULTON CO-BROWN FLD ARPT, the closest NOAA station, 5.8 miles out.
Atlanta's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 2,063 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $561 a year. That compares with roughly 25 Mcf a year of gas at Atlanta's 20.42 per-Mcf rate — about $903 a year — against a local electricity rate of 14.90¢/kWh. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 39.4 years, leaving the 15-year total $1,638 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Atlanta 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. The saving here runs about $744 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 10.8 years.
Atlanta against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Atlanta's winter puts it at rank 2211 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 36 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
Deciding what's next in Atlanta, GA
About 520,070 people live in Atlanta, Georgia, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Every constant behind this page — the 2.99 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Atlanta's 12°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here — see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.