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Pretty much every type of automatic heating system uses electricity, hot water heat has pumps that come on, hot air heat has blower fans that come on, so unless you heat with wood or passive solar or maybe have an old steam heating system that doesn't have any pumps, just a boiler, all of your heat loss can be tracked back to electrical use, by putting a device on your heating system like the Watts Up Pro power meter with data logging, or the TED 5000 home energy use meter you can track what your heating system is doing and how often it is coming on at what points in the day, this would be useful in learning how well a programmable thermostat works, or how much energy it takes to raise the temp in your house a few degrees or how long it takes for your house to drop to a new lower temp, all by tracking how long it takes for your heating system to kick on again or how long it stays on, most heating systems also have a BTU per hour rating so you can get an idea of how many BTU's it takes to increase the temp in your house.
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