Storage heaters get blamed for being expensive to run more often than the technology deserves. A storage heater and a plug-in electric heater turn a unit of electricity into a unit of heat at the same rate — there is no hidden saving built into the storage part. What storage heaters cost to run comes down to three things instead: the tariff the electricity is bought on, how well the unit holds onto the heat once it has made it, and whether the dials are set for the weather you are actually having.
All electric heat costs the same, until the tariff changes it
Resistance heating is resistance heating, whether it comes from a storage heater, a panel heater, an electric radiator or an immersion heater — a kilowatt of electricity becomes the same kilowatt of heat regardless of the appliance making it. The only genuine saving from a storage heater comes from charging it overnight on a cheaper off-peak tariff such as Economy 7, rather than heating the room directly during the day at the standard rate.
How big that gap actually is depends on your supplier and tariff, and it moves with the market, so it is worth checking your own bill rather than assuming a saving that applied a few years ago still holds now.
An old unit can spend more to deliver less
A heater with nothing but input and output dials has no way of knowing how cold the day actually is — someone set it once, possibly years ago, and it has run on that guess ever since. Left on a high input setting through a mild spell, it charges up regardless and either radiates heat nobody needed or has bled it away by the time the room is used that evening.
That is not usually a fault, it is a setting that stopped matching the weather. It is also the most common reason an old unit costs more than a like-for-like modern one — not because the modern one turns electricity into heat more efficiently, but because it wastes less of what it has already paid for overnight.
Where modern storage heaters earn back their price
High heat retention storage heaters hold their charge for longer and release it more evenly, usually under a thermostat rather than a pair of dials, so less of what they charge overnight goes to waste. They cost more to buy than a like-for-like replacement of an old unit.
Working out the best replacement for a night storage heater starts with how badly the existing unit is currently wasting its charge, not the sticker price of the new one — a unit that is well set and holding its heat may not need replacing at all. Schemes that help with the cost of replacing an old storage heater do exist from time to time, and what is currently available changes often enough that it is worth checking rather than relying on what a scheme covered last year.
We can look at what a room is actually costing to heat now against what a modern unit would cost to run, and price a replacement against those figures rather than a rule of thumb. Our charges page sets out what moves the price of a job like that.
If you are unsure, it is always cheaper to ask than to guess. Give us a call and we will tell you straight.