How to understand your GA natural gas bill: supply charges, AGL delivery charges, taxes and what you can actually change.
A Georgia natural gas bill is really two bills printed on one page: what your marketer charges for gas, and what Atlanta Gas Light charges to deliver it. Shopping only affects the first. Once you can tell the two apart, the bill stops being mysterious and becomes a document you can act on.
Your per-therm rate multiplied by the therms you burned. On a fixed plan this rate is constant; on a variable plan it can change month to month. This is the line competition acts on, and the one to check against current Georgia gas rates.
A flat monthly fee from your marketer, typically $5–$10, charged regardless of usage. Over a year a $4 difference is roughly $48 — enough to outweigh a small rate advantage, especially in a low-usage household. See how to understand GA gas rates for the arithmetic.
A fixed monthly delivery charge set by the Georgia Public Service Commission and tied to your home’s design day capacity — an estimate of peak demand on the coldest day, not your actual usage. It is identical across all marketers.
Covers maintaining the pipes and the meter and responding to emergencies. Also PSC-regulated and identical across marketers. If one marketer seems far cheaper than another, it is never because of this line.
State and local sales tax, franchise fees, and periodic PSC-approved riders. Small individually, and not something shopping changes.
Your meter records volume in CCF (hundred cubic feet). The utility multiplies CCF by a heat content factor — usually near 1.0 — to convert to therms. Reading the dials yourself once or twice is worthwhile: it confirms an estimated read, and it tells you what your real monthly usage looks like so you can compare plans against your own number instead of an average.
Most Georgia households burn four to five times more gas in January than in July, because space heating dwarfs cooking and water heating. A large winter bill on a fixed plan is almost always volume, not price. Before assuming you were overcharged, check whether your therms rose while your rate stayed flat. How gas appliances work explains where it goes, and energy savings tips covers what to do about it.
Budget or levelized billing averages your projected annual cost into equal monthly payments. It does not reduce what you pay — it smooths it, and trues up periodically. Prepaid plans charge no deposit and no monthly service fee but require you to keep a balance topped up; they are a common route for customers worried about a credit check, covered in poor credit? you have options.
Work through it in order. Confirm the read was actual rather than estimated. Check the supply rate against your contract — a lapsed fixed term rolling to a variable rate is the single most common cause of a shock bill. Compare therms against the same month last year. If something is still off, contact your marketer first; if that goes nowhere, file a complaint. Your consumer protections set out what marketers are required to do.
Pull three numbers off your statement: supply rate, monthly service charge and therms used. With those you can compare any offer honestly. Then look at what is available now or at individual marketers such as Constellation, XOOM Energy or Walton EMC Natural Gas. Rates in Atlanta and across the AGL footprint are the same, so where you live does not limit your options.