How much electricity does a space heater use?

Are electric space heaters safe? What are some advantages and disadvantages of using your own personal electric furnace? We’ll explore all of that in this post.

How Much Electricity Does a Space Heater Use?

The first step in finding out how much energy your electric space heater uses (and what that might cost) is to find the wattage. This should be printed on the heater itself or in the owner's manual. Your electric heater wattage tells how much electricity is needed to power it.

Most electric heaters use 1,500 watts, but some are slightly less or slightly more. Let’s go ahead and assume you’ve got a 1,500-watt heater. Since 1,000 watts equals 1 kilowatt, that means your heater uses 1.5 kilowatts of power.

However, your electric bill is measured in kilowatt hours, which is the amount of energy used while running a 1-kilowatt appliance for one hour. To figure out how much using that 1.5-kilowatt electric heater will cost, use this formula.

Multiply the number of watts your electric heater uses by the number of hours you plan on using it. For this example, let’s say you’d like to keep the living room toasty on a Saturday set aside for reading. So, we’ll say 8 hours.

1,500 x 8 hours = 12,000

Now divide this number by 1,000.

12,000 / 1,000 = 12

Next, multiply this number by the rate your utility charges for electricity.

(If you have solar, you might be able to skip this last part. You could produce the electricity yourself with your solar panels. But the first steps will help you understand how much power will be devoted to your heater.)

For the sake of example, let’s say your utility company charges $0.28 for electricity. In this case, we’ll finish the calculation like so.

12 x .28 = 3.36

So there you have it. For a day of luxurious reading in a warm room, it might cost you around $3.36.

Curious about how to keep track of your electricity usage? Read this post on how to read an electric meter.