Is my winter heat pump bill normal, or is something wrong?
The short version
- A heat pump shifts heating cost onto the electricity bill. Your winter electricity bill should rise. If you switched from gas, your gas bill should fall by more than the electricity bill rose, in most but not all states.
- Work out your expected winter heating cost from the state table below, then compare. A bill within about 30% of the estimate is normal given how rough any square footage based estimate is.
- A bill at double the estimate usually means one of four things: excessive auxiliary heat, a leakier house than assumed, a rate well above the state average, or an equipment fault.
- The single most common cause of a heat pump bill running far above expectation is electric resistance backup heat.
A heat pump moves your heating cost from the gas bill to the electricity bill, so a higher winter electricity bill is expected and is not by itself evidence of a problem. Here is how to tell the expected increase from a real fault.
What your winter bill should look like
Find your state. The figure is the heating portion only, for an 1,800 square foot home of typical construction, during a core winter month. Everything else on your bill, lights, appliances, hot water, sits on top of it.
| State | Heat pump, winter month | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Arkansas | $61 | $381 |
| Oklahoma | $62 | $385 |
| Louisiana | $62 | $386 |
| Texas | $77 | $478 |
| North Carolina | $85 | $530 |
| Georgia | $86 | $536 |
| West Virginia | $89 | $555 |
| South Carolina | $94 | $588 |
| Florida | $95 | $592 |
| Virginia | $96 | $597 |
| Delaware | $101 | $632 |
| Tennessee | $103 | $645 |
| Kentucky | $109 | $680 |
| Mississippi | $115 | $717 |
| Washington | $115 | $720 |
| Maryland | $122 | $764 |
| Oregon | $124 | $772 |
| Alabama | $128 | $802 |
| District of Columbia | $145 | $907 |
| Idaho | $151 | $943 |
| Wyoming | $160 | $998 |
| Montana | $161 | $1,004 |
| Utah | $162 | $1,010 |
| Nevada | $170 | $1,062 |
| North Dakota | $180 | $1,124 |
| New Mexico | $183 | $1,145 |
| Nebraska | $188 | $1,175 |
| Missouri | $192 | $1,201 |
| Arizona | $194 | $1,214 |
| Colorado | $204 | $1,272 |
| Iowa | $204 | $1,277 |
| South Dakota | $211 | $1,317 |
| Alaska | $215 | $1,341 |
| Kansas | $235 | $1,467 |
| Indiana | $242 | $1,515 |
| Minnesota | $243 | $1,517 |
| Illinois | $258 | $1,612 |
| Ohio | $264 | $1,649 |
| California | $274 | $1,714 |
| Wisconsin | $276 | $1,723 |
| Pennsylvania | $279 | $1,744 |
| Michigan | $297 | $1,857 |
| New Jersey | $319 | $1,994 |
| Hawaii | $347 | $2,171 |
| Vermont | $359 | $2,241 |
| New York | $395 | $2,469 |
| New Hampshire | $407 | $2,541 |
| Connecticut | $434 | $2,710 |
| Rhode Island | $466 | $2,915 |
| Massachusetts | $475 | $2,971 |
| Maine | $479 | $2,997 |
Electricity prices are the 2025-12, 2026-01, 2026-02 heating season mean from EIA. Degree days are ten year normals by census division. Scale roughly with your own floor area.
Remember the bill you stopped paying
The most common reason people think their heat pump is expensive is that they compare their new electricity bill against their old electricity bill, rather than against their old electricity bill plus their old gas bill.
If you switched from gas, the honest comparison is total winter energy spend before against total after. In most states that comparison goes against the heat pump on running cost, because natural gas is cheap. In states with expensive gas or cheap electricity it goes the other way. Your state page gives the answer for where you live rather than a national average.
If you switched from propane, heating oil or electric baseboard, the comparison almost certainly favours the heat pump, and a higher electricity bill will be more than offset.
What is actually on the bill, and why the rate is not one number
This site prices everything using a single average cents per kilowatt hour from EIA. That is the right figure for comparing states and it is not what appears on your bill. Here is a real National Grid bill from a Massachusetts household, 2,640 kWh across 30 days, reproduced line by line. [r/heatpumps, Massachusetts bill]
| Delivery line item | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Customer charge | fixed | $10.00 |
| Distribution | 0.05005 | $132.13 |
| Transition | -0.00036 | −$0.95 |
| Transmission | 0.05798 | $153.07 |
| Energy efficiency | 0.02879 | $76.01 |
| Renewable energy | 0.00050 | $1.32 |
| Net meter recovery | 0.01724 | $45.51 |
| Distributed solar | 0.00935 | $24.69 |
| Electric vehicle | 0.00174 | $4.59 |
| Massachusetts winter bill relief | −10.825% | −$92.43 |
| Delivery total | $353.94 |
Ten separate line items, and that is delivery only. Delivery alone works out at $0.134 per kWh. Add supply and the total came to $760.94, which is $0.288 per kWh all in.
The mistake almost everyone makes reading this bill
When this household posted the photograph and asked whether the bill was reasonable, a commenter answered that they had used 2,640 kWh for a cost of $354, and that this was not bad at all. It was the most reassuring reply in the thread and it was wrong by half. The $354 is the delivery total, the bottom of the table above. The bill was $760.
The same error runs the other way in a Maine thread, where a household reported paying $183 for 1,530 kWh, which works out at 12 cents per kWh. No Maine residential rate is that low, so that figure is very probably one portion of the bill rather than all of it. When someone tells you their rate, ask whether the number includes delivery. In New England it is roughly half the bill, so getting this wrong moves the answer by a factor of two in either direction. It is the single most common reason two people comparing bills conclude that one of them has a broken system.
Two more things worth pulling out of that
The first is reassuring for this site. Our EIA heating season mean for Massachusetts is $0.308 per kWh, and this household paid $0.288. The state average is within 7% of a real bill, which is about as well as a state average can be expected to do.
The second is that this household is already on the discounted heat pump rate and most people in the same position do not know it. A commenter identified it from the distribution line alone:
Based on the $0.05005 distribution charge, yes this already has the heat pump discount applied... it's really poorly described on the bill.
Four things that make a bill run high
1. Auxiliary heat, by a wide margin the most common
Electric resistance backup runs at a COP of exactly 1.0 against roughly 2.6 for the compressor. Federal field measurements found auxiliary energy exceeding 35% of compressor energy at 5 of 12 monitored homes. [NREL/TP-5500-84745 (2023)] A system leaning on the strips can easily run a third above the estimate. Start at why is my heat pump using auxiliary heat.
2. The house loses heat faster than the estimate assumes
Every estimate on this site assumes 8 BTU per square foot per degree day. A draughty older house can be 12 or more, which is 50% above the assumption before anything else goes wrong.
3. Your rate is above the state average
State averages hide large differences between utilities, and between tariffs within one utility. Divide your total bill by the kilowatt hours used and compare that against the figure on your state page. If your utility offers a heat pump or winter tariff and you are not on it, that alone can be worth a large fraction of the gap, and as the bill above shows, being on it is not always obvious from the bill itself.
4. Something is actually wrong
A blocked filter, an iced outdoor unit, low refrigerant charge, or a failed reversing valve all reduce capacity and hand more of the load to the strips. A sudden jump between two similar months, rather than a steady high level, points here.
Solar will not rescue a winter bill, and the data is unambiguous
In every discussion I have read about a high winter heat pump bill, somebody replies telling the homeowner to install solar. It is offered as though it settles the question. Here is what three households with monitored arrays actually produced in the month people are worried about.
| Period | Solar produced | House consumed | Covered |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 November to 20 December | 107 kWh | 1,500 kWh | 7% |
| 19 November to 19 December | 100 kWh | 1,300 kWh | 8% |
| 20 November to 20 December, larger array | 749 kWh | 2,400 kWh | 31% |
Two of those three arrays covered under a tenth of what the house used. That is not a fault in the panels. December has the shortest days of the year, the sun is low, and panels are often under snow. Solar produces least in exactly the month heating demand peaks.
The things that do change a January bill are on this page and on the lockout page, and most of them cost nothing.
How to work out which one it is
- Compare a winter month against a shoulder month. Take October or April as your baseline non heating consumption and subtract. What remains is heating.
- Compare that against the table above, scaled to your floor area. Within about 30% is normal. Double is not.
- Check whether the thermostat reports auxiliary runtime. Most smart thermostats do. If aux is a large share of runtime, you have found it.
- Check your rate. Divide the total bill by kilowatt hours used and compare against your state figure.
- Check the filter and the outdoor unit before calling anyone, because both are free and both are common.
Common questions
Why is my electric bill so high with a heat pump?
A heat pump moves your heating cost onto the electricity bill, so a large winter increase is expected. The usual causes of a bill above expectation are excessive auxiliary resistance heat, a house that loses heat faster than a typical estimate assumes, an electricity rate above the state average, or an equipment fault.
Should my electric bill double in winter with a heat pump?
In a cold state, roughly doubling is not unusual, because heating is being added to a bill that previously carried only lights, appliances and hot water. The test is not whether it doubled, it is whether the heating portion matches what your state and house size predict.
How do I know if my heat pump is using too much electricity?
Subtract a shoulder month such as October from a winter month to isolate heating consumption, then compare against the state figure in the table above, scaled to your floor area. Within about 30% is normal for an estimate this rough.
Should I get solar to fix my winter heat pump bill?
Not as a solution to a winter bill. Three monitored arrays in the sources for this page produced 7%, 8% and 31% of what their households consumed between mid November and mid December. Solar produces least in the month heating demand peaks. It can be a sound annual investment settled over a year of net metering, and it will not change the bill you are looking at.
Am I on my utility's heat pump rate?
Possibly without knowing. One household in these sources was already enrolled and could not tell from their bill; a commenter identified it from the distribution charge line. Enrolment is often not automatic. It is worth one phone call, and a reduction from a standard rate near $0.35 to a heat pump rate near $0.25 is the kind of figure that is available.
Will my gas bill drop enough to cover the higher electric bill?
It depends on your state. Natural gas is the cheapest common heating fuel in the US, so in most states the gas saving does not fully cover the electricity increase on running cost alone. Against propane, oil or electric baseboard it does, comfortably.
How this was checked
The state figures are computed by the same functions as the calculator, from EIA residential electricity prices and EIA ten year heating degree day normals, and they update together.
The 30% tolerance I suggest is my own judgement rather than a measured figure. It reflects how wide the plausible range is on the heat loss coefficient alone, which spans 5 to 12 BTU per square foot per degree day across ordinary houses. I would rather state that openly than imply the estimate is tighter than it is.
What this page does not cover
This page does not diagnose equipment faults, and it cannot tell you whether your specific system is correctly charged or commissioned. It also excludes everything on your bill other than heating, and excludes demand charges and time of use tariffs, either of which can make an average rate unrepresentative of what you actually pay in winter.
References
- U.S. Energy Information Administration. Electricity Data Browser, retail sales and average price by state and sector, monthly. Series accessed through the EIA Open Data API v2.
- U.S. Energy Information Administration. Short-Term Energy Outlook, heating degree days by census division, prior ten year average series. Accessed through the EIA Open Data API v2.
- Homeowner report and follow-up discussion, r/heatpumps, February 2026. Massachusetts, 6,000 sq ft house on National Grid, Bryant 5-ton heat pump serving the top floor with a gas furnace below. Includes a photographed National Grid bill showing the full delivery charge breakdown for 2,640 kWh.
- Winkler, J. and Ramaraj, S. (2023). Field Validation of Air-Source Heat Pumps for Cold Climates. NREL/TP-5500-84745. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. May 2023.
- Mendon, V., Keene, K., Rosenberg, S., Rotondo, J. A., Nwe, K., Young, J., Wind, W., and Goetzler, B. (2025). Performance Results from DOE Cold Climate Heat Pump Challenge Field Validation. PNNL-37127. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-76RL01830. January 2025.