An electric mattress pad (underblanet)
I am generally against buying things. Most things you can buy are bad. This attitude serves me well by preventing the purchase of bad things, but occasionally it means I miss out on good things.
In this case I've missed out on years of energy savings and better sleep by not having an electric mattress pad (I'm from the UK where we call them underblankets or electric beddy warmbles.)
If you don't know, an electric underblanket is a fitted sheet with filaments in it that keep you warm while you sleep.
Heating just your bed at night with an electric underblanket is much more efficient than heating your entire home. Since you spend much of your life in bed the energy savings can be significant, easily covering the cost of buying the electric blanket in the first place.
Affiliate link for electric mattress pad
I decided not to try every single electric mattress pad – and the one I have and would happily recommend seems generic and isn't available in the USA. So instead here's a link to a well reviewed and popular US brand:
Amazon – Sunbeam Electric Mattress Pad
*If you use this link I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. You will also be supporting the ultra wealthy in their quest to find increasingly lavish ways of destroying the planet.
How much money can you save?
I'm assuming you have some understanding of how much it costs to heat your own home. My home currently costs between £1 and £2 a night to maintain a comfortable temperature using central heating during the sleeping hours.
As of writing the average cost of energy is $0.18 per KW/H in the USA1 and £0.26 in the UK.2
An electric blanket runs at between 40 watts and 250 watts depending on the temperature setting.3 So running an electric blanket for 8 hours while you sleep could cost between $0.05 and $0.36 a night in the USA and between £0.08 and £0.52 in the UK.
Sleeping with your electric sheet on the highest temperature would be uncomfortable. I suspect most people sleep with it on one of the lowest temperatures. I usually have mine on the lowest setting, my partner puts her side of the bed on the lower-middle setting.
Together we use around £0.24 on a cold night – compare that to the estimated £1 to maintain the same temperature using central heating.
We're saving between £0.76 and £1.76 every night when we would have used the central heating. Extrapolated to 150 nights (roughly the number we need heating a year) and that's between £114 and £264.
This guesstimate works out to be close to the amount Octopus Energy estimates. According to Octopus Energy using an electric blanket can save a typical UK home MoneySuperMarket – Average gas and electricity bills in the UK Experts reveal the surprisingly low cost of running an electric blanket – The Independent Based on the current price of a KWH in the UK of £300 a year.4 (Translated to current price of energy in the US this would be $216)5Footnotes
£0.25 and the current average price of energy in the USA of $0.14. electricchoice.com