What that means is you can have a heat pump system ~ just like most of the folks in suburban DC, and all down the Tidewater.
$200 a month for heat, cooling, hot water and cooking for several adults ~ with seasonal variation.
If you lived in the Subtropics or Tropics, your A/C cost would depend on what the local energy resources were. I have it on good authority that in Malaysia, where they have their own oil wells, A/C, cooking and hot water runs about $300 a month all year round (assuming you are using electricity). You can cut that back a bit with kerosene cooking systems, but not much. $100 a barrel oil means it gets exported to Japan ~ providing the country with a nice profit, but still costing the locals $100 a barrel PLUS taxes if they want to use it themselves.
BTW, they seemed to have invented taxes in Malaysia. A bottle of cheap wine you can get at WalMart for $2.70 a bottle would, if you could get it, cost another $22.00 per bottle for the excise tax.
The alternative to A/C is a sarong, lots of shade, avoidance of alcohol and eat sparingly.
They have a local problem there with spent hurricanes that graze India. They get slowed down and then spin out over Burma, Thailand and Malaysia for weeks ~ creating something more like a really heavy mist than a serious rain. You can sweat off a couple of pounds a day when that happens.
Tell me about it. My bill this month was $296 and that was with a $98 credit. Of course, my bill is light, gas, water, trash pickup and sewage, plus a couple of other small fees.
By July and Aug, it will be over $400.
I'm from California. I recently moved back to Maryland after spending 3 years in Texas (near San Antonio). I have *never* had bills over $300/mo. Now that I'm back in MD, I have had some "shell shock" over a couple of bills that were over $200--higher than I've ever paid.
To me, high bills suggest that the house isn't properly insulated. There are plenty of things one can do to reduce one's electric bill.