Which is more expensive AC or a heater?

Question

If you used an AC on high for 3 months, and a heater on high for 3 months, which would cost you more money?

Answer 1

You can figure it out yourself pretty easily.  Just read the label on each unit to see what the power consumption is in "watts".  Whichever one is higher consumes more power.  You do not need to send them out to a lab.

Answer 2

It's a hard question to answer because it depends entirely on what equipment you are using, and what environmental conditions you do the testing in.

In some parts of the country people have much larger cold weather heating bills than cooling bills in the summer.. so the choice would be obvious there.

I personally beleive that if you were able to provide a "balanced" situation in that you needed equal amounts of cooling vs. heating in the different seasons you would find that cooling costs more. I base this on the complexity of the equipment involved and my understanding of power consumption vs. costs required.