What is the real cost of heating and what is the cheapest way to go? Talk to a propane supplier and they will say propane is the best way to save on heating. Talk to your neighbor and get a different answer. Talk to a kerosene supplier and you will be told kerosene is the cheapest. What is the real answer and why is a straight one so hard to get?
The answer is that things are changing and what was true a few years back is no longer true. The correct answer also depends on what is available and how much it costs today, and this depends on where you live. The cheapest way to heat today may not be the cheapest way in the future. You must continuously check prices and be prepared to change.
Fuel costs are going up and are not likely to go down in our rapidly changing energy situation, so it is important to get a definitive answer on what is the best way to heat a home. You really can't believe what you are being told by businesses selling fuel and electricity, and it is important to understand what is going on. Read on, the answers may surprise you.
Surprise number one, electric heat can cheaper than propane, even at
PG and E prices. Surprise surprise, (pun intended), if you
are a customer of Surprise Valley Electric, electric heat is even
cheaper than natural gas as Surprise Valley Electric has much lower
electric rates than PG and E and has the lowest electric rates in
California. What's more, according to officials at Surprise Valley
Electric, these rates are not expected to change much for the next
couple of years. Of course nothing is guaranteed, but natural gas
rates are expected to rise quite a bit soon. See Natural Gas
Price Outlooks and Residential
Gas Prices
The bad news is, that electric rates for PG and E are so complex and
confusing if
you are a PG and E customer, that it is almost impossible to predict in
advance how much electric heat will cost. PG and E publishes page
after page of rate information with various usage tiers and conditions
and sub conditions which make it very difficult to figure anything
out. In
most cases, electric heat by PG and E for other than a very small
residence will be
the most expensive form of heat available.
In contrast, Surprise Valley Electric has one fixed non tiered
electric rate for residential service, and their rates are cheaper than
Propane or liquid fuels.
Since calculating actual heating costs is NOT simple it is easy for vested interests to either be deceptive, ignorant, or in many cases outright lie. Who or what do you believe. During the research for this article I ran across many websites which were greatly outdated and were grossly misleading. The answer is you believe the numbers, and believe that the numbers will change from time to time. Even crunching the numbers can give confusing results because there are other factors which influence the cost
For instance, electric heating can be whole house heating or spot heating. Obviously spot heating is cheaper than whole house heating, and it is far easier to spot heat with electricity than with built in furnaces or forced air heating. Also, it is a fact that your comfort is not only Dependant on the air temperature, but on the heat radiation you receive. You can be completely comfortable with much lower air temperatures if you are using radiant heat rather than non radiant heat. This is one reason why people really like wood stoves, the stoves get hot and you receive the radiant heat from the stove.
Furnace efficiency is also a widely variable value. If you
have a newer furnace, it probably has an efficiency of 80 to 85%.
Older furnaces (more than 20 years old) may have efficiencies of 50% to
60%.(See
Measuring Furnace Efficiency). New so called high efficiency
furnaces range from 90% to 95% efficiency.
A new and promising source of home heating is the heat pump.
These may be a very efficient form of home heating and also double as
an air conditioner. Not many are being used yet, so it is hard to
recommend them and one should be very careful before investing in
them. They are hard to understand and suppliers of this product
are likely to not be knowledgeable and will give inaccurate
answers. The geothermal heat pump (one which uses the ground or
fround water as the warm source seems to be the most promising, but
they can be very expensive to install.
All the data in this article was derived from reliable sources which
have no vested interest in selling fuel and were cross checked against
multiple reliable sources to see
if they have reasonable accuracy. Care was taken to compare
various
types of heating in the same way and phone calls were made to
fuel dealers to check on local prices. The results shown below
are typical and have reasonable accuracy as they stand, but to see an
accurate spreadsheet which enables you to enter actual costs and
values, there is one posted on the Internet at BigValleyNews Heat Calculator.
In order to use this spreadsheet, your computer must be able to display
Microsoft Excel documents. With most newer computers on the
Internet, simply clicking on the link to the spreadsheet calculator
should bring up the spreadsheet enabling you to accurately compare
heating costs as prices change.
Electric heat from PG and E at 11cents/KWH (lowest rate available)-----$3.22
Propane heat with efficiency of 80% at $2.30/Gal.---$3.14
Kerosene heat with efficiency of 80% at $2.84/Gal---$2.65
Natural Gas with efficiency of 80% at $1.70/therm.---$2.13
Electric heat from Surprise Valley Electric at 6.1 cents/KWH.---$1.79
Wood pellets in a high efficiency stove at $200/Ton---$1.71
Hard wood in wood burning stove at 70% efficiency at $150/cord
---$0.89
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