torrevieja wrote: » Does Anybody Know the Gas Conversion Factor For Bord Gais, On all My Bills its Just 0m3 0.0000 so i cant work out price Thanks in Advance
TheChizler wrote: » 10.8541 on my most recent Energia bill, I assume they're all the same.
coylemj wrote: » Apparently not. Bord Gais has been >11 since Sept. 2017. It was 11.3725 on my last BG gas bill (Oct).
Odd bill from Energia today, came in much cheaper than expected and then I see the conversion factor is 1. The last bill it was over 11! Guessing Energia are having some kind of system error and have vastly undercalculated the amount owed which I'm sure they'll be looking for!
Funny I noticed on my last bill with SSE that my Conversion Factor had jumped to 22 from about 11. I raised it with them and they said it was an error and that the bill would be reversed. Haven't seen that happening yet. Looks like there may be a wider problem with the conversion factor. Check your bills.
It's used to convert cubic metres (M3) to kWh - you multiply M3 by the conversion factor and you get kWh which is what you get billed for. The higher the conversion factor, the bigger your bill.
My last BGE bill (Jan) had it at 11.4301.
From the regulator's website, text emboldened by me….
The energy content of gas may change depending on where it comes from, this is why there may be differences in the conversion factor from bill to bill. Gas Networks Ireland is responsible for calculating the conversion factor and they pass this information on to suppliers who use it when calculating customer bills.
https://www.cru.ie/consumer-information/billing/your-gas-bill/
This is from the SSE website:
“What is the conversion factor and why does it change?
The Conversion Factor is a multiplier we use to convert your gas from the units on your meter (cubic meters or hundred cubic feet) into the units you are billed on (kilowatt hours).
Cubic meters (m3) and hundred cubic feet (hcf) are units of volume i.e., how much gas you use, while kilowatt hours (kWh) are a unit of energy i.e., how much energy was released from burning the gas you used. The Conversion Factor is the amount of energy (in kWh) released from burning 1m3 or 1hcf of gas.
The reason the Conversion Factor changes is that the energy content of your gas (sometimes referred to as its calorific value) varies depending on:
Gas Networks Ireland (which owns and maintains the gas network in the Republic of Ireland) monitors these factors and adjusts the Conversion Factor accordingly for each gas meter reading or estimate they supply to us.”
My last bill it was 11.4412, and less before that.
They followed up on this and corrected it so the bill went from €46 to almost €300 😥
No it’s all to do with the calorific value of the gas.
That varies form where the gas is sourced from.
For anyone struggling to understand this:
Natural gas when it comes out of the ground varies massively in composition. i.e the ratio of methane / Ethane / Butane / Propane etc along with the amount of non-hydrocarbon gases such as Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide.
So some natural gas is 'worth' more than other natural gas because it will give more heat per cubic meter burnt.
Gas Networks Ireland specifies a minimum calorific value (The amount of heat a given amount of natural gas will output when burnt) for all natural gas they buy. But it's sometimes easier for the selling entity (for instance if it came from Corrib gas field) just to give higher value gas into the network rather than trying to mix it down because they don't have any low quality gas to mix.
Some producing gas fields give very pure natural gas that far exceeds this minimum value while other fields give poor quality gas that struggles to make this value. So, at the gas refinery they mix the streams from various fields to give natural gas that meets this minimum value but doesn't exceed it too much.
As an example, I've seen one field in the UK that produces very high value gas - 95% methane with virtually no non-hydrocarbon components. But when it goes into the gas refinery onshore it's mixed with gas from another field that has an exceptionally high amount of CO2 (8%).
Stripping all the CO2 out of this poor stream would be expensive and might make the field uneconomical - so mixing that poor quality gas with the high quality gas make sense from an economic point of view.
But obviously it wouldn't be very fair to charge people the same amount for gas irrespective of the amount of heat it gave out so therefore they use that conversion factor to try and even it out fairly.
Hope that helps!
4 years ago I was under the mistaken impression that there was a common point of entry into the national gas grid so it was all mixed. As others have pointed out local pressure clearly makes a difference too.
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://wb.vanillicon.com/v2/b2434dfb8c9e5f618d368f946aa7575b.svg)
