How much will your electric bill go up using portable electric heaters?
Answer
Wiki User
12/22/2010
Cost of operating electric portable heaters
You need to know three things:Wattage of heaters
Operating hours per month
Cost of electricity
Example:
If you have a 1000 watt heater that operates 1 hour a month and costs $1.00 per kilowatt for electricity, then it will cost $1.00 to operate the heater for the month. more simply put - from my own experience a helluva lot!!
A little more explanation
You pay for electricity by the kilowatt-hour. The rate is on your bill. If you draw 1000 watts for one hour, your bill goes up by that rate.To calculate the amount you will pay (And this works for any load, not just heaters):
- Find the power draw in watts of the heater.
- Multiply that by the number of hours you plan to run it
- Divide the answer by 1000 to convert from watt-hours to kilowatt-hours
- Multiply the answer by your electric rate.
- The answer is how much it will cost to run.
More from Dave
Portable electric heaters are perfect for heating smaller areas, rooms or garages. There are basically four types: quartz, infrared, ceramic and wire element. Infrared heaters have no fan thus no moving parts where the other three have fans to force air past their heating elements. These require no venting and can be used in enclosed areas. They are 100 percent efficient, that is , they output 100 percent of the energy that is input. Unlike vented gas heaters which exhaust a certain percentage of hot gas (energy) outdoors. They are relatively inexpensive to operate. Below is some information on how to calculate the cost to operate an electric heater:
First, you 'll need the Kilowatt Per Hour rate from your electric bill. This can be found by adding the energy cost and the distribution cost. For example last month mine was .093503/kwh.
Multiply the Watts of the heater (usually found on the back of the unit) by the Kilowatt per hour cost divided by one thousand. Below is an example for a 1500 Watt heater:
1500 W x .093503 KWH / 1000 = $0.14
This heater would cost about 14 cents per hour to operate or $3.37 a day. That is, if it runs continuously. Most heaters have thermostats and will cycle on and off thus reducing the total cost.