[iamthepieman]

If you live in Vermont and burn wood year round you're probably still better off air quality wise than living in a city.

I also live in Vermont and my rates are high but decent at .115 a KwH for the first 200. After that they jump to .255 a KwH. If I did everything with electricity it would cost me $50/Mo for heating water and about 300/Mo for space heating. This is pretty close to what propane cost me back before oil prices crashed.

This is using ideal numbers from manufacturer sites and energy.gov. Given that it's Vermont and it can stay below freezing for months at a time (my basement stays around 45 in the Winter) I'm not sure ideal numbers are...ideal.

This stuff gets complicated and includes social factors, inertia, installed base and regional issues that almost certainly don't apply to you.

I recently installed a wood pellet stove which is both cleaner burning and more efficient than a wood stove. It's great. It saved me more than 50% off my heating costs. However,it's noisy, has failed twice in two years requiring expensive parts and repairs and still doesn't work when the electricity goes out. In rural Vermont you can expect at least one power outage per year that lasts more than 24 hours. Last year we had one that lasted 60 hours. Fortunately it was Winter so it was 6 degrees in the basement where the freezers were and we didn't lose the food.

Unfortunately it was Winter and our pellet stove, propane boiler and space heaters all require electricity to run so we spent a few very chilly days in a 6 degree house.