Choosing a plan for an all-electric home

A home with gas heating and a gas water heater has an electricity bill dominated by summer cooling, with genuinely small winter months. An all-electric home has two seasons of high usage instead of one, and its mild-month floor is higher because the water heater runs year-round.

That changes which plan wins. Structural charges that punish low-usage months — minimum-usage fees in particular — rarely bite an all-electric home, because it may never fall below the threshold. Conversely, the 2,000 kWh benchmark is far more likely to be the relevant comparison point than the 1,000 kWh figure retailers advertise at.

Electric resistance heating and a heat pump also behave very differently in a cold snap, which is worth knowing before you assume last winter's bills predict this one.

Read the average price at 2,000 kWh on the Electricity Facts Label, and read it against your own highest months rather than your average. A plan whose base charge is high looks progressively better at higher usage, so the ordering of plans genuinely changes between benchmarks.

If you are moving into an all-electric home you have not lived in, ask the seller or agent for twelve months of bills. For this housing type the difference between guessing and knowing is larger than usual.

The larger the bill, the more a small difference in rate is worth over a term — which cuts both ways. A three-year contract at a good price saves an all-electric household more than it would save an apartment; the same contract at a poor price costs them more.

The projected annual figures on this site are calculated at the usage level you choose, so setting it to the benchmark that matches your home is the single thing that makes the ranking meaningful.