CostBeaverElectric Furnaces: The Cheapest Box With the Most Expensive Bill
HVAC TIPSAn electric furnace heats your home with resistance coils, like a giant toaster in your ductwork, and installs for $2,500–$6,500 — the cheapest whole-home heat you can buy. The catch is the power bill: resistance heat delivers exactly 1 unit of heat per unit of electricity, while a heat pump delivers 2–3. In the mild winters across Georgia and the Carolinas, the same budget almost always buys a better outcome as a heat pump.
The short version
- An electric furnace is resistance heat: coils that glow, a blower that pushes. Installed cost runs $2,500–$6,500, the lowest of any central system.
- It's 100% efficient at the point of use, and that still loses. A heat pump moves 2–3 units of heat per kWh; resistance heat is stuck at 1.
- Expect roughly 2–3x the winter operating cost of a heat pump. The savings at install get repaid to the utility, with interest.
- It still makes sense as backup heat strips, in mobile homes, or when the budget is genuinely capped and the heat barely runs.
What an electric furnace actually is
Strip away the sheet metal and an electric furnace is a toaster with ambitions. Inside the cabinet sit resistance coils, usually 10 to 20 kW worth, that glow hot when current flows through them. A blower pushes air across the coils and into your ducts. No flame, no flue, no gas line, no combustion safety checks. That simplicity is why it's the cheapest central heating you can put in a house.
You'll find them all over the older all-electric housing stock down here: 1970s ranches in Gwinnett County, brick homes outside Columbia, mobile homes across rural south Georgia. If your "furnace" has no exhaust pipe and your winter power bill makes you wince, you probably own one.
What it costs in 2026, next to the alternatives
Installed prices across Georgia and the Carolinas this year. Read the last column before you fall in love with the first one.
| System | Installed cost (2026) | Winter operating cost |
|---|---|---|
| Electric furnace | $2,500–$6,500 | Highest — 1 unit of heat per kWh, every kWh |
| Heat pump (3-ton air-source) | $5,500–$12,000 | Lowest here — 2–3 units of heat per kWh |
| Gas furnace | $4,500–$9,000 | Low where natural gas runs cheap |
| Propane furnace | $3,000–$6,500 | High once propane pushes past $3 a gallon |
| Oil furnace | $5,000–$9,000 | High, plus tank refills — mostly a mountain holdover |
That first column is how electric furnaces get sold. A landlord or a builder shaves $4,000 off the install and the buyer inherits the operating cost for 20 years. Full furnace pricing details are in our furnace replacement cost guide.
100% efficient, and it still loses
Here's the pitch you'll hear: an electric furnace converts every watt into heat, 100% efficiency, better than the best 98% gas furnace. True. Also beside the point.
Resistance heat is capped at 1:1. One kWh in, one kWh of heat out, forever, by physics. A heat pump isn't converting electricity into heat, it's using electricity to move heat that already exists in the outdoor air — and our outdoor air in January is usually 35–50°F, which is loaded with extractable heat. So the same kWh delivers two to three times the warmth. Efficiency above 100% sounds like a scam until you realize nothing is being created. It's a conveyor belt, not a fire.
The full mechanics are in our heat pump explainer, but the short version: in this climate, the conveyor belt wins.
Say your electric furnace runs 15 kW of strips and your rate is around 14 cents per kWh, roughly what Georgia Power and Duke customers pay once fees land. That's about $2.10 for every hour the furnace runs. A heat pump delivering the same heat at a COP of 3 draws 5 kW: about 70 cents. Run the heat six hours a day through a cold snap and the electric furnace costs you roughly $12.60 a day against the heat pump's $4.20. A January like the 2025 one, where metro Atlanta saw single digits, and that gap shows up on the bill as a three-digit number.
Who should actually buy one
Not nobody. There are three honest cases.
- As backup heat strips inside a heat pump system. This is where resistance coils belong in the Southeast. The heat pump carries the season; the strips fire on the few mornings below 25°F and during defrost. Nearly every heat pump installed down here already includes them.
- Tight budget, mild usage. A $3,000 electric furnace in a small, well-insulated Midlands house that needs heat maybe 40 days a year can pencil out. The operating penalty only bites when the thing actually runs.
- Mobile and manufactured homes. Compact electric furnaces are built for these cabinets and duct layouts, and the replacement swap is cheap and quick. Even here, packaged heat pumps for manufactured homes are worth pricing first.
If your electric furnace is limping and you're tempted to replace it like-for-like because it's cheapest, that's the moment to stop and price the alternative.
Off the natural gas grid — the North Georgia mountains, big stretches of rural south Georgia, western North Carolina — the comparison changes. Propane furnaces heat plenty of homes out there, but propane has run $2.50–$3.00 a gallon in recent winters, which puts its cost per unit of heat right up with resistance electric. Oil furnaces still hang on in older mountain homes around western NC, with tank refills and service contracts attached. In both cases a modern cold-climate heat pump usually beats the delivered-fuel bill, and rural EMC co-ops increasingly offer heat pump rebates to push exactly that switch. Dual-fuel, heat pump plus the existing propane furnace for the coldest snaps, is the compromise that works at elevation.
The switch-to-heat-pump math
So you have an electric furnace and central AC, and something's dying. Here's the actual decision.
Your AC and your ducts are already sized for forced air, which makes this the cheapest possible heat pump conversion: the heat pump simply replaces the AC condenser and keeps your existing strips as backup. Price the delta, not the sticker. If a new AC alone runs $6,000 and a heat pump runs $8,500, you're paying $2,500 to cut your winter heating cost by half to two-thirds. A household spending $1,200 a winter on resistance heat saves $600–$800 a year, so the delta pays back in three to four winters, then keeps paying for a decade.
One thing that changed: the federal 25C credit that covered up to $2,000 of a heat pump expired December 31, 2025, so don't build 2026 math on it. Utility rebates survived — Georgia Power runs heat pump incentives, Duke covers the Upstate and Charlotte, Dominion covers the Midlands. Check the one that actually serves your address. The full head-to-head is in our heat pump vs furnace comparison.
Bottom line
The electric furnace is the cheapest box and the most expensive bill. That's the whole story. It earns its place as backup strips, in mobile homes, and in the rare house where heat barely runs. Everywhere else in Georgia and the Carolinas, the same budget buys more comfort for less money as a heat pump — our winters are exactly the conditions heat pumps were made for. Don't let the low sticker make a 20-year decision for you.
