Electric baseboard heating cost calculator
Baseboard heat is simple to cost: total watts of baseboard, hours the thermostat calls for heat, and your rate.
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| Connected load | |
| Per day | |
| Per month (30 days) | |
| Per heating season (150 days) | |
| Cost per million BTU |
Why baseboard costs what it does
Electric baseboard converts every kilowatt-hour into 3,412 BTU, no more. Where a heat pump on the same wire delivers two to three times that, baseboard is the ceiling price for heat, which is why so many baseboard houses add a ductless heat pump in the main room and leave the baseboard as backup for the bedrooms. The calculator on the heat pump page shows the difference for your house.
The hours figure is the part people guess wrong. A thermostat in a well-insulated room may call for heat four hours a day in January; a drafty room with single-pane windows can run twelve. Reading your meter for one cold day with the rest of the house off is the only reliable way to know.