oil v electric this winter

snaps

Price of heating oil is off the scale now (Local companies looking for 70c+ a litre). I live by myself, have very cheap electric bills (winter bills 80e max, summer 45e max), used 1000l oil last year.

I only need heating on when i need it, electric shower etc.

Just wondering if i use the electric shower and a couple of electric fan heaters in the house would it work out cheaper than getting a tank of oil?

I also have an open fire which i use a lot in the winter, have endless amount of timber/turf.

Pete67

To achieve the same level of comfort electricity will cost more than twice the cost of oil (assuming you are billed at the day rate). Heres why:

Heating oil has a calorific value of approx 38 MJ/litre so 1000 litres of oil has an energy content of 38,000 MJ or 38GJ. If you assume the boiler has an efficiency of 90% then you can assume that 90% of this energy goes into heating the house and providing hot water, the other 10% goes up the flue. So say your tank of oil provides 34,200 MJ of usable heat.

34,200 MJ is the same as 9,500 kWh and each kWh of electrical energy cost you 19cents. So 9,500 kWh will cost you €1,905. The same amount of heat obtained from the tank of oil will cost you €700.

snaps

Pete67 wrote: »

To achieve the same level of comfort electricity will cost more than twice the cost of oil (assuming you are billed at the day rate). Heres why:

Heating oil has a calorific value of approx 38 MJ/litre so 1000 litres of oil has an energy content of 38,000 MJ or 38GJ. If you assume the boiler has an efficiency of 90% then you can assume that 90% of this energy goes into heating the house and providing hot water, the other 10% goes up the flue. So say your tank of oil provides 34,200 MJ of usable heat.

34,200 MJ is the same as 9,500 kWh and each kWh of electrical energy cost you 19cents. So 9,500 kWh will cost you €1,905. The same amount of heat obtained from the tank of oil will cost you €700.

Very detailed reply there, im with airtricty and im sure im only paying around 13c a unit?

Pete67

Just checked last bill (Bord Gais) and my electricity is charged at 14.1c/kWh + VAT at 13.5% so thats 16c/kWh. Prices have dropped a little.

Even at 16c/kWh 9,500kWh will cost €1,520, so still more than twice the price of a tank of oil.

The only time electric heating begins to make sense is when using storage heaters on the nightsaver rate, and even then its probably more expensive than oil. Also there are many disadvantages to storage heaters - you have heat whether you want it or not during the day, and often run out of stored heat in the evenings. Then you end up using convection heaters on day rate to maintain room temps.

snaps

Ok, thanks very much for your answers. So the morale of the story is not to be heavy handed with the timer switch this winter!