How much does it cost to run an electric furnace?
We've pre-filled an typical electric furnace below. Set your electricity rate and adjust the hours to match how you use yours — the cost updates instantly.
An electric furnace is the single largest electric load most homes ever run — 10,000 to 20,000 watts, roughly the draw of an entire house's worth of other appliances combined. Unlike a heat pump, it makes heat with plain electric-resistance elements, which are 100% efficient at converting watts to heat but offer no multiplier: you pay for every one of those kilowatts at full price, all winter long.
That's why the number on this page will probably be the biggest one you calculate on this site. Even at a conservative 3 hours a day, a 10 kW furnace burns 30 kWh — more than most refrigerators use in a week — and a 20 kW unit on a genuinely cold day can double that. The real lever isn't the furnace's rating, which you can't change once it's installed; it's your thermostat setpoint and how tightly your ductwork and insulation hold onto the heat you already paid for.
What drives the cost of running an electric furnace
- Wattage tier: an electric furnace's nameplate draw (10,000-20,000W) is 5-10x a space heater's, so cost scales almost linearly with unit size — a 20kW furnace costs roughly double a 10kW one for the same runtime
- Daily runtime in heating season: furnaces cycle on/off to hold a setpoint, so "hours per day" here really means total cumulative on-time, which climbs fast in sustained cold and drops close to zero in shoulder months
- Your electricity rate and climate zone: because the load is so large, even a few cents/kWh difference in your rate — or living somewhere winters are long and severe — swings the monthly total by tens to hundreds of dollars
How to cut it
- Skip smart-thermostat setback schedules that are generic to "any furnace" — for electric resistance heat the setback savings are proportionally larger than gas, so a generic tip undersells the point; make it furnace-specific
- Don't include a full furnace-replacement/installation cost breakdown ($/BTU sizing, install labor) — that's the distinct purchase-price/install-cost intent already well covered by HomeGuide, Angi, HomeAdvisor, Fixr; this page should stay narrowly on running cost to avoid diluting intent the way the fridge/TV pages did
- Don't try to cover heat pump vs. electric furnace comparison in depth on this page — it's a real adjacent query but deserves its own page/FAQ link rather than bloating this one
Common questions
How much does it cost to run an electric furnace per month?
At a typical 10,000W and about 3 hours a day, an electric furnace costs roughly $153 a month at $0.17/kWh. Set your own rate and hours above for an exact figure.
How can I cut the cost of running an electric furnace?
Skip smart-thermostat setback schedules that are generic to "any furnace" — for electric resistance heat the setback savings are proportionally larger than gas, so a generic tip undersells the point; make it furnace-specific
Why is an electric furnace so much more expensive to run than a heat pump?
A heat pump moves existing heat from outside air into your home, so it can deliver 2-3x more heat energy than the electricity it consumes. An electric furnace makes heat directly from resistance elements, so it's capped at 100% efficiency — every watt in is one watt of heat out, never more. That's why electric furnaces cost noticeably more per hour to run than a heat pump of similar heating capacity, even though both run on electricity.
Does the 10,000-20,000W rating mean it draws that much the whole time it's on?
Close to it. Electric-resistance furnaces don't modulate the way a heat pump or gas furnace burner can — the heating elements are essentially on or off, so whenever the furnace is actively heating, it's drawing at or near its full nameplate wattage. The main way total cost drops is fewer total hours of runtime per day, not a lower draw while running.
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