I have always assumed that heating my house with electricity would be way more expensive than heating it with heating oil. But I just checked my oil supplier, and the price of heating oil is up to 4.599 per gallon. I then consulted this [fuel comparison calculator](http://www.pelletheat.org/3/residential/compareFuel.cfm/compareFuel.cfm) (my brand new oil furnace is rated at 85% efficiency, and my electricity is .088 per KWH) and discovered that heating with fuel oil at the the current price will cost $39.22 per million BTU’s, while electricity is only $26.38 per million BTU’s.
Could this be right? Will I be better off this winter just buying electric heaters?
Put in a geothermal system. It’s electric, but you get over 4 times the heat out of it than you would with a electric resistance system.
[QUOTE=Balthisar]
Put in a geothermal system. It’s electric, but you get over 4 times the heat out of it than you would with a electric resistance system.
[/QUOTE]
I’m sure my landlord would appreciate the improvement.
[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
I have always assumed that heating my house with electricity would be way more expensive than heating it with heating oil. But I just checked my oil supplier, and the price of heating oil is up to 4.599 per gallon. I then consulted this [fuel comparison calculator](http://www.pelletheat.org/3/residential/compareFuel.cfm/compareFuel.cfm) (my brand new oil furnace is rated at 85% efficiency, and my electricity is .088 per KWH) and discovered that heating with fuel oil at the the current price will cost $39.22 per million BTU’s, while electricity is only $26.38 per million BTU’s.
Could this be right? Will I be better off this winter just buying electric heaters?
[/QUOTE]
They don’t show the math, but it’s probably right.
If you use electric heaters, you will have local control. In other words, you can heat only the room[s] you want. The downside is that you no longer have a central system so even temperature control and even comfort throughout will be difficult.
On top of that, many of those heaters plugged into 115V wall outlets may be a fire hazard. If you have standard 14ga wire, at 115V you have about 1380 watts or so available for that entire circuit. (not just that outlet)
Heating a whole house with multiple electric heaters----depending on the quality of your electrical system and the loads already present-----poses at least the potential for fire hazard.
Proceed with caution.
I think electric is cheaper now. I don’t know about heating oil, but I am set up with a natural gas fireplace that puts out mega heat, and we opted not to use it last winter and just went with our electric heat pump and a small electric space heater for the basement (where the fireplace and the kids bedrooms are) and we never saw a bill above $180 in a month, and that is for a 2400 sq foot home.
YMMV as always.