oil vs electric vs gas

rob_53

Try http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/experts/heatcalc.xls

It's a simple chart and you can modify prices and efficiencies

m dewolfe

oil vs gas vs electric

I am trying to explain to a new customer the pricing of each fuel and how to compare them against each other in a fair and unbiased way. Can anyone recomend a website or page that might make this all come together for a customer in simple laymans terms?..I am all for oilfired radiant..but they have other thoughts....Mark

michael_34

thank you

I was looking for something like this also.
Thank you, Thank you!
Michael

Glenn Sossin_2

how many btu's for a buck

A gallon of oil, depending on who you ask is approx 140,000 btu's. If a gallon of oil is selling for $5/gal, then you are buying 28,000 btu's for your dollar.

A therm of Nat Gas, is 100,000 btu's/therm. Recently I paid approx 1.60 per therm after you figure all the misc charges in. But for purposes of this response, lets assume Nat Gas goes up 25% (likely) to $2.00 per therm this heating season. That would mean you would buy 50,000 btu's for your dollar. About 80% more heat energy.


Last I checked, LP Gas was going for approx $3.20 per gallon. Again, depending on who you ask, each gallon of LP gas has 91,800 btu's. Assuming (probably wishful thinking) that LP stayed at $3.20 a gallon, that would be 28,688 btu's per dollar.

So now, we have a gross energy numbers

$1 of oil 28,000
$1 of Nat Gas 50,000
1$ of LP Gas 28,688

Clearly you can see Nat gas is a clear winner here. To fine tune this further, you would apply the theoretical efficiency of your heat system to make a more informed decision.

Assume your customer has a 10yr old oil boiler running at seasonal efficiency of 80%, that means your getting 22,400 btu's for your dollar. (28,000 x .80)

If your thinking of replacing the old oil boiler with a condensing gas boiler you will probably average above 90% (lots of variables). If we used Nat Gas, and would average 90%, we would get 45,000 btu's for our dollar (50,000 x .90) .

Assuming the same type of boiler for LP, we would get 25,819 btu's for our dollar - still better than oil.

But the potential savings don't end there - there are rebates from National Grid on high efficiency equipment, and if its a boiler - it may come with a indoor/outdoor reset. This likely would add another 10% + fuel usage savings giving your heating system the ability to make real time decisions based on feed back from an outdoor temp sensor and boiler system water temps.

I attached a small chart you may also find useful.

Hope this helped. Let your customer play with the efficiency number - the other ones are physics/science. Good luck

Glenn