What Will It Cost to Heat This Winter?

This week's Maine fuel prices, the arithmetic on how much you burned last winter, the same heat priced on oil, kerosene, propane, pellets and wood, and where to ask for help paying for it.

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What Will It Cost to Heat This Winter?

This week's Maine fuel prices, the arithmetic on how much you burned last winter, the same heat priced on oil, kerosene, propane, pellets and wood, and where to ask for help paying for it.

Heating is the biggest bill of the year in most houses here, and it does not arrive month by month — it arrives as a truck and a delivery slip for several hundred dollars at a time. This page puts three things in one place: what fuel costs this week, what a winter of it comes to on your own usage, and who to ring if paying for it is going to be a problem.

What fuel costs this week

Fuel	Average price	Lowest to highest	Surveyed
Heating oilgallon	$4.97	$4.04 – $5.40	August 3, 2026
Kerosenegallon	$5.85	—	August 3, 2026
Propanegallon	$3.20	—	August 3, 2026
Wood pelletston	$357.00	—	August 3, 2026
Firewoodcord	$355.00	—	August 3, 2026

The state surveys delivered-fuel retailers every week from September through April, and every other week from May to August. The wood and pellet figures come from the same survey's informal poll of dealers.

Source: Maine Department of Energy Resources, checked August 3, 2026 (4 days ago).

This is not a quote

These are spot cash prices, in the state's own words — not pre-buy, not a contract price, not a discount, and not an offer from anyone. Your own dealer's price will differ, and sometimes by a lot: on 3 August 2026 the survey found heating oil at $4.04 a gallon somewhere in Maine and $5.40 somewhere else. Ring around before you order.

These are statewide figures

The prices above are statewide averages. The state also publishes six regional columns, but it does not publish anywhere — not on the page, not in the weekly PDF — which towns or counties belong to which region. There is therefore no honest way to say which column covers Damariscotta, so this page uses the statewide average and tells you that is what it is doing, rather than guessing at a region.

Heating oil: The low and high are the cheapest and dearest prices the survey found anywhere in Maine that week, not a range for this area.
Kerosene: Used in monitor heaters and where a tank sits outdoors, because it does not gel in the cold the way oil can.
Propane: The state's propane figure is a 30-day cash or credit price for households buying at least 900 gallons a year. A household on propane only for cooking or hot water generally pays more per gallon than this.
Wood pellets: From an informal survey of dealers: Maine-made pellets in 40 lb bags, delivered. Bulk pellets may cost a little more.
Firewood: From an informal survey of dealers, based on a minimum two-cord purchase, delivered.

What a winter of it costs

How much gallons did you buy last winter?

Your delivery slips are the best answer there is. A rough figure still gives you a useful number.

What heats your home?

Hot water or steam to radiators or baseboard pipes — the commonest setup in an older house here.

Work it out for an average winter instead (6,170)

Last winter ran 6,607 heating degree days here. An average of the winters below is 6,170. Ticking the box scales what you bought by the difference.

$3,976

What that costs now

800 gallons at $4.97 a gallon

$568

Set aside each month, over 7 months

the same total, spread across the heating season

78%

Of the fuel you pay for, this much becomes heat in your rooms

87% of it gets burned into heat, and 90% of that heat survives the pipes or ducts on the way

The same warmth, bought another way

Every line below buys exactly as much heat as your oil boiler does above — no colder, no warmer. The prices are this week’s published averages.

Setup	You would need	At this week’s price
Oil boileryours	800 gallons	$3,976
Oil furnace	890 gallons	$4,422
Kerosene room heater	740 gallons	$4,326
Propane boiler	1,136 gallons	$3,636
Pellet stove	7.0 tons	$2,506
Pellet boiler	7.1 tons	$2,547
Wood stove	5.4 cords	$1,921

Those are prices, and prices are all they are. This page does not tell anybody to change fuel, and it is in no position to: it knows nothing about what a new boiler or stove would cost to buy and fit, whether your chimney suits it, where you would put a ton of pellets, who would carry them in, or what happens in a power cut. Every line is the cost of the fuel alone, at this week's published average, for exactly the same amount of warmth.

It does not know your house

This is arithmetic on a number you typed and nothing more. It does not know your house, your windows, how warm you keep it, or how much of your oil goes to hot water rather than heat. The best figure to put in is the one on last winter's delivery slips — add up the gallons. Anything else is a guess, and the answer can only be as good as the guess.

Was last winter a cold one?

A heating degree day counts one degree that a day’s average temperature sat below 65°F. Add them up over a winter and you have a plain measure of how hard the winter worked your heating — and of why one year’s deliveries do not match the next.

The last 10 full winters here averaged 6,170 degree days. 2025–26 came to 6,607 — about 7% colder than that average.

Winter	Heating degree days
2025–26	6,607
2024–25	6,296
2023–24	5,865
2022–23	5,658
2021–22	6,049
2020–21	5,931
2019–20	6,203
2018–19	6,708
2017–18	6,299
2016–17	6,087

Weather record complete to August 7, 2026.

Daily temperatures from Open-Meteo’s ERA5 reanalysis (CC BY 4.0). This is model data on a grid of about 10 km, not a thermometer in the village. Open-Meteo

Help with the bill

HEAP, the Home Energy Assistance Program, helps homeowners and renters pay for heat, and can also cover emergency fuel delivery, some energy-related repairs and utility payments. Applications for the 2026–2027 season opened on 3 August 2026 and run until 29 May 2027, or until the money runs out — MaineHousing asks people to apply as early as they can. Crisis help for a household nearly out of fuel (ECIP) runs from 1 November 2026 to 30 April 2027; you start it by filing a HEAP application and then calling your agency.

The most a household can earn and still qualify — 2026–2027 season

Household	In a month	In a year
1 person	$3,173	$38,070
2 people	$4,149	$49,784
3 people	$5,125	$61,498
4 people	$6,101	$73,213
5 people	$7,077	$84,927
6 people	$8,053	$96,641
7 people	$8,236	$98,837
8 people	$8,420	$101,033
9 people	$8,603	$103,230
10 people	$8,786	$105,426

More than ten people in the household? Your Community Action Agency will tell you the limit — MaineHousing does not publish one.

What this page does not price

Electric heat and heat pumps

This page prices the fuels the state surveys at a single average — oil, kerosene, propane, pellets and firewood. It deliberately does not price electric heat or heat pumps, because the state publishes those as a range across utilities rather than as one figure: on 3 August 2026, $0.286 to $0.313 a kilowatt-hour for electric baseboard, and an equivalent $0.098 to $0.107 for an air-source heat pump, which Efficiency Maine rates at 2.93 times the efficiency of electric resistance heat. Picking a point inside a published range would be inventing a price. Efficiency Maine's own comparison lets you put in the rate from your own bill. Efficiency Maine's heating cost comparison.

Worth knowing

The spread is worth more than the average

On 3 August 2026 the state's survey found heating oil at $4.04 a gallon somewhere in Maine and $5.40 somewhere else. Across an 800-gallon winter that difference is $1,088. The statewide average is a useful anchor and a poor substitute for ringing three dealers. this week's survey.

Two winters are never the same winter

The winter of 2025–26 ran 6,607 heating degree days here, against an average of about 6,170 across the ten winters before it — roughly 7% harder than usual. That is most of the difference between one year's fuel order and the next, and it is why last winter's gallons are a starting point rather than an answer. Open-Meteo's ERA5 archive.

Where to go next

Maine Department of Energy Resources — heating fuel pricesThis week's survey, the dollars-per-million-Btu comparison, and every weekly bulletin back to 2021.
MaineHousing — Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP)Income limits, the document list, the online application, and the ZIP-code lookup for your local agency.
Midcoast Maine Community Action(207) 442-7963 · toll free (800) 221-2221The agency that takes HEAP applications for Lincoln County. 34 Wing Farm Parkway, Bath.
Efficiency Maine — Compare Home Heating CostsThe state trust's own calculator, where you can change every assumption including the efficiencies used here.

About these tools

What fuel costs this week

Fuel	Average price	Lowest to highest	Surveyed
Heating oilgallon	$4.97	$4.04 – $5.40	August 3, 2026
Kerosenegallon	$5.85	—	August 3, 2026
Propanegallon	$3.20	—	August 3, 2026
Wood pelletston	$357.00	—	August 3, 2026
Firewoodcord	$355.00	—	August 3, 2026

Source: Maine Department of Energy Resources, checked August 3, 2026 (4 days ago).

This is not a quote

These are statewide figures

Heating oil: The low and high are the cheapest and dearest prices the survey found anywhere in Maine that week, not a range for this area.
Kerosene: Used in monitor heaters and where a tank sits outdoors, because it does not gel in the cold the way oil can.
Propane: The state's propane figure is a 30-day cash or credit price for households buying at least 900 gallons a year. A household on propane only for cooking or hot water generally pays more per gallon than this.
Wood pellets: From an informal survey of dealers: Maine-made pellets in 40 lb bags, delivered. Bulk pellets may cost a little more.
Firewood: From an informal survey of dealers, based on a minimum two-cord purchase, delivered.

What a winter of it costs

How much gallons did you buy last winter?

Your delivery slips are the best answer there is. A rough figure still gives you a useful number.

What heats your home?

Hot water or steam to radiators or baseboard pipes — the commonest setup in an older house here.

Work it out for an average winter instead (6,170)

Last winter ran 6,607 heating degree days here. An average of the winters below is 6,170. Ticking the box scales what you bought by the difference.

$3,976

What that costs now

800 gallons at $4.97 a gallon

$568

Set aside each month, over 7 months

the same total, spread across the heating season

78%

Of the fuel you pay for, this much becomes heat in your rooms

87% of it gets burned into heat, and 90% of that heat survives the pipes or ducts on the way

The same warmth, bought another way

Every line below buys exactly as much heat as your oil boiler does above — no colder, no warmer. The prices are this week’s published averages.

Setup	You would need	At this week’s price
Oil boileryours	800 gallons	$3,976
Oil furnace	890 gallons	$4,422
Kerosene room heater	740 gallons	$4,326
Propane boiler	1,136 gallons	$3,636
Pellet stove	7.0 tons	$2,506
Pellet boiler	7.1 tons	$2,547
Wood stove	5.4 cords	$1,921

It does not know your house

Was last winter a cold one?

The last 10 full winters here averaged 6,170 degree days. 2025–26 came to 6,607 — about 7% colder than that average.

Winter	Heating degree days
2025–26	6,607
2024–25	6,296
2023–24	5,865
2022–23	5,658
2021–22	6,049
2020–21	5,931
2019–20	6,203
2018–19	6,708
2017–18	6,299
2016–17	6,087

Weather record complete to August 7, 2026.

Daily temperatures from Open-Meteo’s ERA5 reanalysis (CC BY 4.0). This is model data on a grid of about 10 km, not a thermometer in the village. Open-Meteo

Help with the bill

The most a household can earn and still qualify — 2026–2027 season

Household	In a month	In a year
1 person	$3,173	$38,070
2 people	$4,149	$49,784
3 people	$5,125	$61,498
4 people	$6,101	$73,213
5 people	$7,077	$84,927
6 people	$8,053	$96,641
7 people	$8,236	$98,837
8 people	$8,420	$101,033
9 people	$8,603	$103,230
10 people	$8,786	$105,426

More than ten people in the household? Your Community Action Agency will tell you the limit — MaineHousing does not publish one.

What this page does not price

Electric heat and heat pumps

Worth knowing

The spread is worth more than the average

Two winters are never the same winter

Where to go next

Maine Department of Energy Resources — heating fuel pricesThis week's survey, the dollars-per-million-Btu comparison, and every weekly bulletin back to 2021.
MaineHousing — Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP)Income limits, the document list, the online application, and the ZIP-code lookup for your local agency.
Midcoast Maine Community Action(207) 442-7963 · toll free (800) 221-2221The agency that takes HEAP applications for Lincoln County. 34 Wing Farm Parkway, Bath.
Efficiency Maine — Compare Home Heating CostsThe state trust's own calculator, where you can change every assumption including the efficiencies used here.

What Will It Cost to Heat This Winter?

About these tools

What Will It Cost to Heat This Winter?

What fuel costs this week

What a winter of it costs

The same warmth, bought another way

Was last winter a cold one?

Help with the bill

The most a household can earn and still qualify — 2026–2027 season

What this page does not price

Electric heat and heat pumps

Worth knowing

The spread is worth more than the average

Two winters are never the same winter

Where to go next

About these tools

What fuel costs this week

What a winter of it costs

The same warmth, bought another way

Was last winter a cold one?

Help with the bill

The most a household can earn and still qualify — 2026–2027 season

What this page does not price

Electric heat and heat pumps

Worth knowing

The spread is worth more than the average

Two winters are never the same winter

Where to go next

Find the office that covers you

Applying

What to have ready before you start