Electiric heating using baseboard heaters is fairly common here in Newfoundland. If the power goes out then unless you have another source of heat such as a wood stove then you're on your own!

We have oil fired central heating which of course needs electricity to drive the circulation pump. Another point to consider is that if you get your water from a well as we do, then no power means no water. I have considered getting a gennie to run the boiler and water pump alone. Not needed it in four years (despite snow and ice storms) but its probably worth doing somethign about. As others have pointed out, most power here is overhead cables so more susceptable to ice and snow damage.

I wouldn't run my BBQ in the house period. Too darn risky. The same goes for your generator of course!

Wow, lots of useful info to ponder over, thanks guys. Looks like we'll definitely be investing in a wood burner when we move to Winnipeg

Anita (whose power has just come back on again after another cut this evening. Damn E-ON! Am typing real fast as they said it may go off again as the fault's not fixed and the whole street's on a temporary generator now )

Actually, that's a good point: while our security system has a backup battery, the fire alarms appear to be mains powered. Certainly they go out when I turn off the circuit breaker for the lights.

Accepted.

It's just that I haven't seen anyone quote a monthly plan for oil that, just for heating, hasn't been at least $90 a month more than than our monthly electricity payment for everything. Allowing for my discovery that a monthly oil plan is actually only 10 months, the lowest I've seen quoted is still more than our annual cost for everything, including running air conditioning.

I'm sure all the homes involved cannot be worse in terms of insulation and facing the wrong direction - so maybe electricity isn't always the most expensive.

Could it be that electricity is expensive when it's baseboards and/or heaters but not necessarily so when the electricity is powering the furnace and hot air?

We are on all electric here ( with occasional propane fire use but rare ) and Spring, Summer and Fall we bill less that $200 all in and as low as $130. For about 4 months we bill about $350 with highest last year $365.

Can't say that was particularly expensive ( forced air with air con )

Just had a thought. Last winter we lost power, but not everything. Some things worked and some didn't.

The problem was on a cable running to our house so it was just us. The Power Company was fantastically quick in their response and repair time.

But I remember boiling the kettle by plugging it into a different socket. So some power losses may not be the whole thing.

You might be able to plug a heater in somewhere that helps to keep warm or at least boil water for hot soup or drinks.

That goes without saying doesn't it?

It's not the rate you pay which is likely the same in either situation but the amount of electricity used.

In your case your heat source for the most part is not electricity but the heat pump which gets the heat either from the surrounding air or geothermally from the ground. The electricity is used to run the pump and the air circulation system.

It require a lot more electricity to heat baseboard heaters than what you use to run your pump and fan.

I really don't know. I have a duplex that is heated by baseboards only. The size of both apartments is similar to our house. From what I know of the electricity bills, the cost for both apartments isn't that much more than for our house.

Part of that is accounted for by two service charges instead of one.

When the tenants scarpered, I found a bill for mid Feb to mid March this year and it was $180 excluding the service charge. If it was the same in the other apartment, the total would have been remarkably similar to our house for the same period.

We met some people last night who "live in the country", that is, they have a farm for the weekends and a condo in Toronto. Power cuts were mentioned and one said "we have a well pump so when the power went out I didn't know what to do, I wasn't about to fetch buckets of water from the pool to flush the toilet so, when it wasn't back after an hour, we packed up and went to the condo". I wondered why we always have candles to hand, if the power goes out, we should just go to Florida!

We have two sump pumps. The first night in our house we woke (hungover) to a neighbour knocking the door to wake us up to no power, and full sumps. We had to buy extension leads pronto to hook up to his generator.
Now we have a generator of our own, and we need it on average six times a year, power is that unreliable. During summer / autumn, we're not so concerned about the sump pumps, but during the early spring when it's thawing - it's a big concern. The basement was flooded before when the previous owners were here, I don't want that to happen again...

I think our emergency supply kit will need to include treatment for a Coronary, nineteen flights of stairs in the dark with no elevator doesn't sound that much fun !!

I just hope that the electronic lock on the lobby door defaults to open otherwise the chances of being locked out are high

When I lived on the 29th floor and there was a sustained power outage I waited it out in Scotland Yard. That's the only time I've slept in the bar without someone waking me up and telling me to drink more or go home.

Didn't Toronto have rolling blackouts for days?
Thats a long time in the pub!!

We had a similar experience when we lived in Fredericton with a heat pump. We heated a 3000 sqft house plus a basement in January (sustained temps of about -20) for about $270 for all power that month.

I don't know what type of brain failure we had when we decided to build this house and put in an oil furnace with hot water heat ($400 equalized)

Same issues here - well with pump, and oil heat. When the power goes out, we have bottles of drinking water, can't flush the loo, and have to light our propane fireplaces with a battery. Luckily we haven't had any longer than about 12 hours here (Noel last year), but it would get old quick if we did (and smelly )