How Much Does Electric Heating Cost in the UK?

Standard-rate electricity usually costs much more per kWh than gas. A panel heater turns almost every unit of electricity it buys into heat, but it still needs roughly one unit of paid electricity for every unit of heat delivered.

A gas boiler wastes some energy, so the cost of useful heat is higher than the gas unit rate suggests. But gas can still be cheaper than direct electric heating because the gap between the two fuel prices is large.

Fuel price is only the first number. System performance turns it into the cost of useful heat.

Storage heaters remain resistance heaters: they do not multiply heat. Cheap off-peak charging can lower the price paid, but controls, heat lost or released before it is needed, and any peak-rate top-up all affect the result. A cheaper overnight rate does not automatically mean a cheaper overall tariff — check the daytime rate too, especially if the heater uses daytime boost.

These are energy-only running costs, not full household bills. Standing charges are excluded because this comparison is about the extra cost of producing space heat.

Now give each system the same job: deliver 10,000 kWh of useful space heat over a year using the same illustrative assumptions. This is a hypothetical home, not a claim about typical UK heat use.

Same home. Same useful heat. Very different amounts of energy bought.

This is an illustration, not a forecast. It excludes standing charges, hot water, installation, maintenance, real system losses and other household energy use. Your heat demand, tariff, boiler efficiency and heat-pump performance can all change the answer.

A fair gas comparison must allow for boiler efficiency. At 85% efficiency, a boiler needs about 1.18kWh of gas to deliver 1kWh of useful heat. With gas at 7.97p/kWh, that useful heat costs about 9.4p.

Direct electric heating at 26.32p/kWh costs about 26.3p for the same useful heat. That is why replacing gas with panel heaters or an electric boiler can raise running costs sharply, even though the electric system itself is close to 100% efficient at the point of use.

A gas boiler may still be cheaper than a heat pump on some tariff and performance combinations. Gas standing charges, maintenance and system losses also matter to the whole-home decision, but they should be shown separately rather than hidden inside the useful-heat comparison.

An electric boiler heats water for radiators or hot water using electricity. It may be simple to install in the right property, but it normally remains close to a one-for-one conversion: one unit of electricity produces about one unit of heat.

A heat pump moves heat from outside into the home. That different process is what allows it to deliver several units of heat from one unit of electricity.

Both use electricity. Their running costs can be completely different.

SCOP means seasonal coefficient of performance. In plain English, it estimates how much heat a heat pump delivers for each unit of electricity across a heating season.

At a SCOP of 3.0, delivering 10,000kWh of heat needs about 3,333kWh of electricity. At 26.32p/kWh, that is about £877 rather than £2,632 for direct electric heating.

A headline SCOP is not a guarantee. Real performance depends on the home’s heat loss, radiator or underfloor-heating design, water temperatures, weather, controls, hot-water demand and how the system is operated.

Use a sensible central assumption, then test a better and worse result. The Heat Pump Guide explains the design questions behind that number.

Solar panels can cover some heating electricity when generation and demand happen at the same time. A home battery can shift some solar or cheaper tariff electricity into a later period.

But UK heating demand is winter-heavy, while solar generation is strongest in spring and summer. A large annual solar total does not mean the panels will run the heating through dark winter evenings.

Model solar and battery as possible helpers, not as a reason to ignore the heating system’s underlying running cost.

Direct electric heating is usually expensive for a whole home on a standard tariff. A well-performing heat pump can be far cheaper because it needs much less electricity to deliver the same heat.

Storage heaters can improve the result where a genuinely cheaper charging rate, suitable controls and the home’s daily pattern work together. Electric boilers remain direct electric heating and should not be judged as though they have heat-pump efficiency.

Start with the annual useful heat your home needs. Then compare the energy each system must buy, the rate paid for it and a realistic performance assumption. Add installation costs only after the running-cost comparison is clear.

Electric is the fuel. The system decides how much heat you get from it.