Why your winter bill can beat your summer one
Short answer. In a house with an electric geyser and electric room heaters, winter consumption regularly exceeds summer. A geyser left on is about 540 units a month and an 1,800 watt heater used four hours an evening is about 216 — together more than a 1.5 ton air conditioner running all summer.
Applies: Winter · Cost to do: Small one-off cost · Indicative saving: around 300 units a month
The two loads that do it
Both are resistive heating, and resistive heating is the most electricity-hungry thing a household can do. There is no clever technology to buy: a 2,000 watt element delivers 2,000 watts of heat, and every type of heater is equally efficient at doing so.
What differs is how much heat you actually need and how much of it reaches a person rather than a building.
Heat the person, not the building
A radiant heater — halogen or quartz — warms objects and people directly rather than heating air. An 800 watt radiant heater aimed at a seating area produces more perceived warmth than a 2,000 watt convector warming an entire room.
Convectors and oil-filled radiators suit a room that stays occupied for hours; radiant heaters suit shorter, focused use. Matching the type to the pattern is worth more than any efficiency claim on the box.
Close the room before buying anything
Heating a room that opens onto a cold corridor is heating the corridor. A draught strip under the door and a curtain over an ill-fitting window cost very little and reduce the heater's run time immediately.
In northern districts the single biggest structural loss is usually the roof, and the second is single glazing on a windward elevation.
The gas substitution trap
Where gas is available it delivers heat far more cheaply. Winter gas load shedding is exactly why households buy electric heaters as backup — and then quietly use them as primary through the worst weeks.
That switch happens without any decision being made, and it shows up on the bill before anyone notices the habit. If your January bill surprised you, this is the first thing to check.
What to actually do
- Put the geyser on a timer. This is worth more than everything else on this list combined.
- Draught-proof doors and windows before increasing heating capacity.
- Use a lower-wattage radiant heater aimed at people, rather than a large convector warming an empty room.
- Close the door of the room being heated.
- Never leave a heater running in an unoccupied room, and never overnight in a closed room.
- Track whether gas outages have quietly turned your backup heater into your primary one.
What does not work
- “Oil-filled radiators are more economical than fan heaters.”
- At the same wattage they deliver identical heat. What differs is that a radiator's thermostat cycles it off and it retains heat after switch-off, which suits long occupancy — not that it converts electricity more efficiently.
- “Halogen heaters use less electricity.”
- They are usually sold at lower wattages, which is a different thing. A 2,000 watt halogen heater and a 2,000 watt convector cost exactly the same to run.
Frequently asked questions
Which electric heater type is cheapest to run?
None of them, at the same wattage — all resistive heaters are essentially 100 per cent efficient. The saving comes from using fewer watts directed at people, and from a thermostat that actually switches off.
Why is my December bill higher than my July one?
Almost always the geyser and heaters together. Compare the units line on both bills rather than the amounts, and check whether gas outages pushed you onto electric heating without a conscious decision.
Related guides
- Water heating: the largest saving in most Pakistani homes — winter, costs nothing
- Staying under 200 units and keeping protected status — all year, costs nothing
The numbers behind this
All 10 guides are ranked by value in the index. To see what your own house needs, run the efficiency audit.