If your heater is equipped with a good thermostat and you do not heat the room to a warmer-than-normal temperature, you can save money by using an electric space heater in a room you're in and keeping the rest of the house chillier.
Heating your home with electric space heaters can easily double or triple your electric bill if you are not careful. Even though they are typically small in size, and often touted as 100% efficient, electric space heaters use a lot of electricity.
The Energy Department estimates that the cost to heat an entire home with electric space heaters cost 43% more than a gas furnace. Using a space heater in your bedroom only while you sleep is a practical way to use a space heater and won't make much of a dent in your electricity bill.
Most space heaters use 1500 watts of electricity per hour. However, there are smaller heaters too, starting at 200W per hour.
Infrared Heaters – the lowest wattage per heat provided makes these the cheapest to run. Oil-Filled Heaters – their long-lasting heat makes the most out of the electricity. Storage Heaters – saves in running costs by using off-peak electricity tariffs.
The electric space heaters tested at Consumer Reports use 1,500 watts to fully power. Since you should never use a space heater while sleeping, it would cost $2.82 a day to use a space heater 16 hours a day, based on the national average electricity rate.
For example, if you are running a space heater in your basement home office for 8-hours a day, then you can expect to pay $1.60 per day. If there are an average of 21-work days in a month, then you can expect to add around $33.60 per month to your electric bill to run your space heater.
The short answer is you should use a space heater and keep the house at a lower temperature, since it's more efficient than heating the entire area of the house. However, if you're concerned about your emissions, you can replace an oil or gas furnace with a heat pump which runs on electricity.
Ceramic heaters are considered to be very safe and they heat up incredibly fast which means that no energy gets wasted. However, the majority of devices use 1.5 kilowatts per hour, if you are using them to their full potential.
So put on a sweater, as my fellow columnist says, and remember, if you are still cold, portable space heaters can indeed be more economical for the purpose of heating a small portion of the home, while gas-powered central heating can be most efficient for keeping your whole house warm and cozy.
How Much Does It Cost To Run Gas Central Heating Per Hour? If you use mains gas, you'll pay roughly 2.4p per kilowatt-hour. This means that if you have a 35 kW boiler, it will cost you around £0.84 to run it for an hour. However, if you use LPG, it can be a little more expensive.
So I did the research, and even made a free calculator. On average, a 1,500W heater costs around $0.20 per hour to run on high. This adds up to a cost of $1.60 for 8 hours a day, and $48 per month. The running costs depend on your electric heater's power, running time, heat settings, and your electricity price.
How much electricity does a space heater use? Example (you can use an electric heater running cost calculator below for different wattages/kWh prices): If we assume the price of electricity is $0.1319 per kWh, a 1,500-watt electric space heater will cost; $0.20 to run per hour. $4.80 to run per 24 hours (day).
Electric heaters are all technically 100% efficient (all the energy they use is converted straight to heat). That said, some heaters provide more heat per unit of energy than others. Typically, infrared heaters are the most efficient, but oil-filled heaters have the longest lasting heat.
Are electric radiators cheap to run? It's stated that electric radiators are 100 per cent efficient. This is because they use 100 per cent of the electricity provided to heat a room and so they are an energy-efficient way to heat your home.
As a rule of thumb, you'll need roughly 10 watts of heating power for every square foot of floor area in the room. This means that a 1,500-watt heater can be the primary heat source for an area measuring up to 150 square feet.
"Having the heating on only when you need it is, in the long run, the best way to save energy, and therefore money," the website explains. "A timer's best as your thermostat turns your heating on and off to keep your home at the temperature you set.
What are the running costs of a gas fire? Gas is often much cheaper than other sources of heating – up to 70% compared to electric fires. This is because gas has its own source, whereas electric is heated via another source.
As recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO), UK households should have a room temperature in winter of around 18°C. The Energy Saving Trust advises that you should always set your thermostat to the lowest comfortable temperature – to aid the battle with climate change – but should aim for around 18-21°C.
Running your heater per day (8 hours): 8 hours X 13.9 c per kWh = $1.11/day. Using your heater for 8 hours a day per month: $1.11 X 30 = $33.3/month.
According to research from Energy Helpline, keeping your radiators on all night will cost you an extra £10.80 a day. Over the course of a week, that would cost you £75.60, and if you did it all month you could be paying out a whopping £335.
Overall, for heating the same space, an electric heater costs more than twice as much as using central heating. However, electric radiators can be more cost effective if you're heating a small area of your house like one or two rooms.