Advanced options
What The Infrared Panel Heater Calculator Works Out
- Running cost: panel watts x hours on, divided by 1,000 for kilowatt-hours, multiplied by your electricity rate, shown per day and per 30-day month. The rate defaults to the current Ofgem price cap unit rate (26.32p per kWh from October 2026), at which a 600W panel for five hours is 3 kWh, about 79p a day and GBP 24 a month. Like every electric resistance heater it converts electricity to heat at effectively 100% and draws its full rating whenever on.
- Versus gas heating the whole house: the same kilowatt-hours bought as gas at the price cap gas rate (about 8p) cost less than a third as much, so the panel only wins if it lets the boiler stay off for rooms nobody is in. One person, one room, boiler off is the winning case; a panel on top of normal heating is pure extra cost.
- Where infrared honestly wins: the home office in an otherwise empty weekday house, conservatories and garden rooms off the gas system, cold corners that tempt a whole-house thermostat override, and no-gas properties where it competes within the electric field on comfort-per-watt.
- Custom wattage and number of panels (advanced): enter a panel rating outside the three sizes offered and scale for several panels. Size at 40W to 60W per square metre for comfort-supplement duty.
- Thermostat duty cycle (advanced): a panel on a plug-in or built-in thermostat cycles once the room's surfaces warm, typically 60% to 80% of the time; a panel without one runs at 100%.
- Per hour and per heating season (advanced): the hourly cost of the panels and the total over your heating days, 180 being roughly October to March.
- Whole-house gas heating cost per hour (advanced): what your boiler costs to heat the whole house for an hour, typically GBP 0.80 to GBP 1.50 for a gas-heated three-bed. The saving card subtracts the panel's daily cost from the boiler cost for the same hours.
- Payback on the panel (advanced): the panel price (GBP 150 to GBP 400 fitted) divided by the daily saving, in heating days or seasons. It only exists where the panel genuinely replaces whole-house heating.
- Break-even boiler cost (advanced): the panels' hourly cost, which whole-house heating must exceed for zoning to save money. Occupancy timers and open-window logic trim the forgot-it-on waste that undoes zonal savings in practice.