There are many variables to consider. What is the outside temperature? How warm do you want it to be inside your room? How large is the room? How well insulated are the walls? What kind of furniture is in the room? What is your local electric rate?
The easiest way to give you an idea of costs would be to provide the worse case scenario: How much it would cost if the heater was running constantly for an hour.
However, since your heater will be controlled by a thermostat it is very unlikely that it would run for an hour straight. Remember, this is worse case scenario.
- Find out what you are paying your local electric company per kilowatt hour. For example, in Seattle, the average cost of a kilowatt hour is 9 cents per hour.
2. Locate the wattage of your heater based on the rating information printed on the heater. A common wattage for wall heaters is 1,500 watts
3. Apply the formula 1,500 ÷ 1,000 x $0.09 to determine the cost to run the heater for one hour. (Dividing by 1,000 changes watt hours to kilowatt hours.)
In this example, it will cost $0.135 if it was running for 1 hour straight. Or $3.24 to run for 24 hours straight.
Keep in mind, it’s safe to assume that your heater will not be running constantly. Your thermostat will check the room temperature and if when it senses that the room has reached the set temperature, it will turn the heater off. It will remain off until the thermostat determines the room temperature fell below the set temperature.
Tip
As long as you know the wattage of any electrical heater, you can use this formula to find out the cost of using it per hour.