I went all electric in 93 and never looked back. My cost to heat and cool dropped dramatically.
The company I was using kept the tank full and billed me monthly for amount used on the tank meter. I called them off and on for 5 years to come get their FULL buried tank and they kept saying they would then never showed up. One day I forgot about it being there and backed the brush cutter over the lid and it sprung a leak. This was on a Sunday and the Fire Dept had no trouble getting their guy out there within the hour. He ran a copper tube off 40-50 feet from the tank and lit it to burn off the gas then they came back and dug it out but left me with the hole.
My electric bill is pretty low, even during peak AC season I'm only running about $70/month on the high side. I'm not sure if it would be worthwhile to switch from propane to electric, our house is a Colonial, about 2500sq ft. I don't really have a baseline to calculate the electricity usage, though I bet it could be offset with solar panels at some point if I went that route.
I'll eventually have a standby generator as well, so I'll still have a need for propane regardless of the heating system. I'll do some poking around. On the upside, our propane company called me back yesterday, AFTER hours, and set me up with a better price and apologized for the high one. It's not as good of a price as last year, but based on our usage it's the best they can do, though she encouraged me to call back in the summer when prices *should* be down a bit. Now I'm at $2.399. I figured it'll cost an extra $495 to heat the house for the year, not
terrible I guess.
I also took the opportunity to calculate how much it cost us for the entire year, kinda. From January through December, we burned 900 gallons of propane. Our heating season is roughly six months. For the entire year's heat, hot water, and cooking it cost us $1800. If I count January through January it increases to $2200. I didn't think that was too bad for a 2500sq ft house.
Also something to note, we have a Navien condensing boiler for our heat/hot water. It's hot water on demand. From April through October, we only burned about 90 gallons of propane. (at the $1.949 price).
