What electric heating adds to a bill, state by state

In every state here, the cheapest plan charges less for each added heating kWh than the bill averages across all of its kWh. The fixed charge is part of that average, and it is already paid before the heating starts, so the added kWh do not carry it.

In 10 of them — Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, Ohio, Georgia, Texas, California, Florida, and Arizona — the dearest plan charges more for an added kWh than that average. On a tiered schedule the heating load lands on top of everything else the home uses, in the highest band it reaches, and on a time-of-use schedule it is billed at whatever the hours cost.

Some utilities publish a schedule only homes heated by electricity can take. The figures above leave these out, because not every household qualifies. Whether one is worth moving to is a question about the whole bill, not about what heating adds: a home that moves to a heating schedule moves all of its consumption there.

Priced that way, for the same home, 8 of the 10 utilities that publish one charge less on the heating schedule than on their cheapest general plan. At Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC and San Diego Gas & Electric Co, the heating schedule costs more.

The consumption is spread evenly across the year. Real heating use is concentrated in winter, and on a schedule with seasonal prices or monthly tiers that changes where the heating kWh are billed — in a direction that depends on the schedule, so nothing here is adjusted either way.

The rest of the home is the state’s mean household consumption less the heating load, and never less than zero. The appliance pages price the same heating load at the survey’s lighter and heavier quartiles as well as its mean.

Every figure here is computed when the site is built, from the records named below, by the same rate engine that fills the state, utility and appliance pages this guide links to. When those records are refreshed, the figures change with them; the words around them do not, which is why no sentence here states a direction the data has not been checked for.

The text was reviewed by the editor before publication. The methodology page sets out what the rate engine assumes and where its figures stop being reliable.