We just recently installed one in the basement of our new home and it makes a huge difference. We aren't into our usual Wisconsin winter yet but I'm sure it will handle it just fine. I installed one for my parents last winter and they significantly reduced their heating costs, they went from about 600 gallons of fuel oil before the stove to less than 200 gallons last year. They were able to keep the house about 72 degrees day and night.
I have to disagree on the pollution that a pellet stove creates. Please take a look at this article:
Pellet stove fuel
As the name suggests, pellet stoves burn "pellets." These actually are recycled sawdust, wood shavings, walnut and peanut shells, and similar biomass wastes that are ground up, compressed and extruded. They look like rabbet feed and they're sold in convenient 40-pound bags.
Pellets have several advantages over wood. For one, they're environmentally responsible. They turn wastes that would otherwise be dumped at landfills into energy. Intense compression squeezes the moisture out of pellets, dropping their moisture content to below 8%-- very dry, compared to cord wood at from 20% to 30%. The dryer the fuel, the more heat it can produce.
Both because of the fuel's consistency and because of the stove's combustion mechanics, pellets burn very hot. This means they burn cleaner and more efficiently than cord wood. Compared to old wood stoves, which carry from 30 to 50 grams of particulates per hour in their smoke, or new, EPA-certified stoves that give off about 5 grams per hour, pellet stoves have very low particulate emissions, some at less than 1 gram per hour. For example, in independent tests, Breckwell's pellet stove showed less than .27 grams per hour of particulate matter.
Unlike the wood-burning stoves of the 1970s, which converted from 50% to 60% of their fuel to heat, pellet stoves offer 75% to 90% overall efficiency (be sure to look for "overall efficiency" when comparing). In fact, so much heat is extracted that most pellet stoves may be vented horizontally out through a wall instead of through a conventional chimney (see below).
Pellets also create much less ash than cord wood and they don't give off creosote, a common wood stove and fireplace hazard that collects in chimneys, causing chimney fires, and that blackens glass doors.
You can read the whole thing here:
http://www.hometips.com/cs-protected/guides/pellet.html
to overcome the electricity requirement get a generator for when the power goes out!
