trying to decide to stay with oil or go electric for heating and water

nickynysmon

I am new to this forum and for this post ask for any help in deciding whether to switch completely to electric or stick with oil. my boiler is three years old about, and is currently out of action. accepting oil prices will increase by at least twenty five percent, and living alone in a small bungalow , I am wondering if it is wise to stick with oil or try electric portable heaters. last week I bought the new dimplex eco cadiz oil free radiator, which is a wonderful device, and am thinking of buying three more this coming week also I am having an electric water heater installed, all very expensive. my thinking is, by selectively heating each room, and the water I use, or simply turning it all off if I am out, this will compensate in plenty for the higher cost per kilowatt of electricity. no one seems to have the calculations on all this but I am hoping by stripping out all wasted energy it will in effect save a lot of money. plus, no boiler to maintain. I may be doing something very reckless and unwise or very imaginative and saving money!! any ideas please??

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

There are several threads on this subject in the 'Fuel and other heating' forum.

Oil cost around 65p a litre. A litre contains 10.2kWh so that works out at approx 6.5p for a kWh.

The othe big factor is the efficiency of your oil boiler - this can be from 50% to 95%. So the effective price is between 7p and 13p for a kWh.

You can compare that with the price you pay for electricity.

The big difficulty is predicting future changes in the price of oil and electricity.

nickynysmon

thank you for this, the biggest factor in my calculation is efficiency of usage. living completely alone, and assuming I stay in one room most of the time it seems inefficient to heat all the house. I wonder if by being very selective how rooms are heated one can make great savings
also the cost of maintenance is nil. as far as water goes, the cost of heating a large tank in the boiler and the fact we waste a lot of water that is always heated makes this usage inefficient. I am hoping to save two hundred pounds a year, or more. a typical oil bill for the year is about eight hundred pounds. at .12 pence a kilowatt shall we say, this gives at least 66oo kilowatt hours of electricity, such is my thinking. am I right??? I will look at the other threads you mention though.