What's cheaper, Gas or Electric?

t8769

I live in a concrete flat.. not great for insulation, but I only use one room.

I've often heard that its better to have the gas heating on, as its cheaper than electric bar fires.

I can set the gas central heating to only go into one room, but I still have to heat the boiler, and all that area, so its not as efficient as a simple electric fire. But then I've been told that heating with electric is very expensive.


Any advice appreciated.


thanks

Cardew

Heating by gas is 3 to 4 times cheaper* than using electricity is you have a normal tariff.

Heating by electricity is about the most expensive way possible.

* Depends on your tariff for each and the efficiency of the gas boiler.

t8769

Well its a very old gas boiler, so it has to heat the boiler, and the air ducts, whereas the elec fire just sits by me with one or two bars on, so perhaps it'll all work out.

Is that a definnate calculation 3 - 4 times cheaper?

Cardew

t8769 wrote: »

Well its a very old gas boiler, so it has to heat the boiler, and the air ducts, whereas the elec fire just sits by me with one or two bars on, so perhaps it'll all work out.

Is that a definnate calculation 3 - 4 times cheaper?

As I said above "Depends on your tariff for each and the efficiency of the gas boiler."

Gas cost anything between 2p to 2.7p a kWh.

Really old inefficient gas boilers can be as low as 60% efficient new condensing boilers perhaps 90% efficient.

So using those figures heat produced by gas can cost between 2.2p/kWh to 4.5p/kWh.

Electricity prices vary between, say, 7p to 10p/kWh

You can take any permutation of those figures and gas will always be much cheaper than electricity; 3-4 times cheaper is a reasonable estimate.

Your call!

far

Not disagreeing with your argument Cardew but you can get electricity far cheaper than that - for instance our new supplier (won't name them in case it's deemed to be advertising!) will charge us 5.599p per KWh and with Economy 7 Night Rate (assuming you have storage heaters) in our region it could be as low as 3.051p - all including VAT. Doubt that would make electricity cheaper than Gas for heating though.

Cardew

far wrote: »

Not disagreeing with your argument Cardew but you can get electricity far cheaper than that - for instance our new supplier (won't name them in case it's deemed to be advertising!) will charge us 5.599p per KWh and with Economy 7 Night Rate (assuming you have storage heaters) in our region it could be as low as 3.051p - all including VAT. Doubt that would make electricity cheaper than Gas for heating though.

Hi,
The OP was talking about heating with a "simple electric fire" which "sits by him" so Economy 7 is not in the equation, and anyway I did caveat my remarks by saying "on a normal tariff"

I was not aware that there was any electricity available anywhere in the country for as low as 5.599p/kWh.
Can you tell us who with, and which area please - it is perfectly permissable to state which company - a lot of us might move to that company.

far

That price is with Scottish Power Online Energy Saver 4 tariff in the Northern (15) region. Their gas prices are slightly dearer than British Gas standard tariff though so it's swings and roundabouts really.

Cardew

far wrote: »

That price is with Scottish Power Online Energy Saver 4 tariff in the Northern (15) region. Their gas prices are slightly dearer than British Gas standard tariff though so it's swings and roundabouts really.

Thanks, for myself(Midlands - BG fixed to 2010)) they are slightly cheaper but like you, for gas they are quite a bit more.

However for the OP the main point is that under all conditions gas is much cheaper than daytime electricity.

t8769

I'm only heeting one room, but perhaps it would be cheaper and easier to have my old boiler working.

The biggest problem is being in a concrete flat, which takes 4-5hs to warm up, in a normal house a room can heat up in 20min. Sometimes i come in at 3am and the room's still warm..

thanks

Thanks

dc

Have you tried some insulation, as it is cheaper to just heat the air rather than the whole concrete storage radiator you seem to live in. Turn radiators off in the rooms you do not use.

Agree with Cardew, even if it is an old boiler gas it would be roughly half the cost. Beware of hidden tarif costs , low users are hammered especially on leccy.

olly300

Agree with Cardew. Find from experience and have been told by 2 engineers (who I happily stopped from sitting me down and writing out calculations) that heating with gas is cheaper than electricity.

in a normal house a room can heat up in 20min.

No such thing. I've lived in a mixture of properties that are "normal houses" heated by different methods.

Older brick houses, pre-1950's, heated by gas are cold unless they have loads of insulation and can still take hours to heat up. The trick in some of them was to keep the heating at such a level the house is never allowed to go completely cold particularly when the weather is forecasted to be at freezing for a few days at a time i.e. set the thermostat at 10c and the heating to come on lots.

The only older brick (1930s) and newish brick (1980s) properities I've lived in with electric heating were simply cold all the time. Central heating systems generally have pipes running through the property under floors and up and down walls giving out more heat in a room than the radiator alone.

Post-1950's brick housing with cavity walls etc heat up very quickly and generally can be warm without the heating on.