[deeptrance]

My 2 cents on this:

In Texas, summer is the expensive season if you have gas or wood heat. But when I lived in a place with electric heat, my winter bill was higher.

Consider the physics and thermodynamics of heating vs. cooling: to heat something up is easy because heat is basically "wasted energy" that comes from normal processes. Cooling, however, is a much more technically difficult process to achieve. Merely having the lights and TV on in your house will heat it up. There is no such thing for cooling because the waste generated by energy use is almost entirely in the form of HEAT.

However, electric heat, at least the central forced-air system I had in my house, can be VERY expensive because you're basically using perfectly good electricity for nothing more than "waste." It's a very inefficient way to heat your home.