Heat Pump Payback in Kennesaw, GA
Should Kennesaw switch to a heat pump?
This one's marginal in Kennesaw: it only clears if you stay long enough. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $5,500. Kennesaw's residents would see roughly $374 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 14.7 years. It's a genuine toss-up here, Kennesaw's numbers don't point clearly either way.
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Kennesaw is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
How cold Kennesaw actually gets
2508 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Kennesaw has a mild winter by US standards; the cooling side runs to 2112 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. 19.4°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of 10°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.17 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Mild on average, but the occasional cold snap is what sizes the equipment: at a 19.4°F design temperature Kennesaw falls just under the 25°F line where a standard heat pump starts leaning on resistance backup, so the model prices a cold-climate unit to be safe. Source: NOAA station Cobb Co-Mc Collum Fld Airport, 1.4 miles from Kennesaw, the closest one on record.
The yearly running costs in Kennesaw
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 2,003 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $567 a year. Kennesaw's gas rate of $20.42 per Mcf, applied to the 26 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $941 a year, against 14.90¢ per kWh for electricity. Priced as a standalone purchase, with a working furnace ripped out early, payback would take longer than the 15-year equipment life. Measured against the like-for-like replacement instead, a household here ends 15 years $116 ahead.
How sensitive Kennesaw's result is to prices
Gas would only overtake the heat pump in Kennesaw if electricity rose past 50.0¢/kWh from 14.90¢, or gas fell under $6.09 per Mcf from $20.42. A useful quote test for Kennesaw: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $3,740 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $2,618.
Electric resistance heat in Kennesaw, compared
Not every home in Kennesaw has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $787 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $10,000 spent up front comes back in about 12.7 years.
Kennesaw against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Kennesaw's winter puts it at rank 2178 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1102 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 Kennesaw, GA
Kennesaw, Georgia is home to about 37,740 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 Kennesaw, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Every constant behind this page, the 3.17 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Kennesaw's 19.4°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.