Seasonal costs
Heating and cooling appliances do not run at their annual average when the weather demands them. These pages raise the duty cycles to match in-season operation and rank what it actually costs.
- What does it cost to heat a home with electricity?
What every electric heating option costs to run through a winter, why the cheapest one is not the one with the lowest wattage, and where the arithmetic breaks down in severe cold.
- What does it cost to cool a home in summer?
What every cooling option costs to run through a summer, why a fan and an air conditioner are not alternatives, and the appliance that quietly raises your cooling bill.
Why the season changes the answer
Every appliance and category page on this site prices an appliance at its annual-average duty cycle — how much of the year it actually draws power, averaged across warm months and cold. That average is the wrong number in the week you are asking the question. A heat pump that runs a little in October runs almost continuously in a January cold snap, and an air conditioner idle in spring cycles most of a July afternoon.
These two pages raise each appliance’s baseline duty cycle to approximate in-season operation — 60% higher for mid-winter heating and 50% for peak-summer cooling — and show the multiplier openly rather than folding it into the result. The figures come out higher than elsewhere on the site, and, more usefully, the order can change: the cheapest option through a whole season is not always the one that looked cheapest at the annual average.
The ranking is not the wattage order
The single most expensive thing you can do with a seasonal appliance is choose it by the number on its label. Electric resistance heaters all convert power to heat one-for-one, so a 1,500-watt space heater and a 1,500-watt section of baseboard cost the same to run — while a heat pump of similar draw delivers several times the heat per unit of electricity. In summer the trap runs the other way: a ceiling fan and an air conditioner sit far apart on cost but do different jobs, and treating the cheap one as a substitute for the expensive one just leaves a room that is no cooler. Each page below leads with the ranking those distinctions produce, then the reasoning behind it.
What these pages are not
Neither page is a forecast of your bill. Climate, insulation, thermostat habits and the age of the equipment move a real seasonal cost far more than any national average can capture. What these pages answer is the question you can actually settle without knowing your house: given the same assumptions, which option costs less to run through the season, and why. For a number tied to where you live, set your state on any appliance page.