Oil filled radiator

caramelcarol

Are oil filled radiators cheaper to run then gas radiators please 

Swipe

Electric is 4 times more expensive than gas so you could probably heat a few rooms in the house for the price of running an  oil filled radiator.

QrizB

By gas radiators, do you mean gas-fired central heating? Or do you mean portable gas cabinet heaters?

• Gas-fired central heating is usually cheaper to run than oil-filled electric radiators.
• Oil-filled electric radiators could be cheaper to run than portable gas cabinet heaters.

From Notts Energy:

• Mains gas, 4.4p/kWh
• Electricity, 22.3p/kWh
  
• Butane, 27.8p/kWh (but can be a lot more, esp. for small bottles)
  

matelodave

wittynamegoeshere said:

They're expensive but work.  They only make sense if you have no other options, nobody with a working gas heating system would save money by switching to electric heating.  The only exception is a heat pump, but that's completely different.

TBH you wouldn't save any money with a heatpump over a gas central heating.

If gas is around 5p/kwh and leccy is around 22p/kwh and an optimistic heatpump has a COP of 3 then 1 kwh of heat would cost 7.3p/kwh. 

To acheive parity with gas you have to have a COP of 4.4. Using the figures on the Notts website 4.4 and 22.3 you'd need a COP of 5.

15kg of butane for a cabinet heater is presently priced at £46.50 which equates to 14kwh x 15kg = 210kwh = 22p/kwh which is about the same as leccy (smaller cylinders are even more expensive per kwh)

savers_united

I would say they have their place, depending on circumstances you could be better off with an oil radiator in one or two rooms of the house. If that's all you use then it saves having to heat the whole house. If your heating system is old then it's far cheaper upfront to buy a few oil rads then a whole heating system, less maintence etc. 
Also you can generate your own electric to offset costs and you can GE cheaper night rates unlike gas. 

So it's down to the circumstances, we use one in the attic room as plumbing the heating up there and buying a new rad would be 10* the price and the room only gets used once in a while. 

doodling

Hi,

wittynamegoeshere said:

Totally agree on oil-filled radiators.  We're heating the whole house with them, but only out of necessity and as a temporary measure.  They're good, but definitely cost more to run.

On the gas vs heat pump debate, that all depends on  the price of each.  It's possible that cost, taxation or subsidy could shift this balance in the future.

Indeed, although its not going to change that quickly.  If using electricity in a heat pump suddenly became cheaper than burning mains gas then there would be power cuts by December 2022 as our electricity supply failed to cope with the increased demand.

The same if the price of electric cars falls too quickly or the price of petrol / diesel rises too quickly.

Hopefully the government has spotted that issue.

QrizB

doodling said:

Indeed, although its not going to change that quickly.  If using electricity in a heat pump suddenly became cheaper than burning mains gas then there would be power cuts by December 2022 as our electricity supply failed to cope with the increased demand.

If electricity stays at 20p/kWh but gas rises to 8p/kWh, or gas stays at 4p/kWh but electricity falls to 10p/kWh, most people would still stick with gas simply because they don't have £8k lying around for an ASHP. Heat pump installers, importers and manufacturers might suddenly get full order books but with the best will in the world you wouldn't see more than 5% of properties refitted in a year.

So, say 1.5M houses switch from gas to electric heating, and each needs 12MWh per year (the average gas consumption). That's an increase in electrical demand of 18TWh, roughly 6% of national consumption.

Or, looking at it another way, imagine all 1.5M properties need 12kW of heat simultaneously on a cold winter's night. With a COP of 3, that's 4kW of electrical demand, so an additional 6GW of demand. However the diurnal (day-night) drop in electricity demand is greater than that, so there's still spare capacity.

Reed_Richards

QrizB said:

...Or, looking at it another way, imagine all 1.5M properties need 12kW of heat simultaneously on a cold winter's night. With a COP of 3, that's 4kW of electrical demand, so an additional 6GW of demand. However the diurnal (day-night) drop in electricity demand is greater than that, so there's still spare capacity.

Whilst a modern Air Source Heat Pump may have a rated Seasonal Coefficient of Performance of 3 (or a bit more) that does not mean that they will achieve an actual COP of 3 on a cold winter night.  An SCoP of X means that you would use 1/X of the electricity you would otherwise use to heat your house in a year.

Also, I run my ASHP with a night time set-back which means it is usually off at night and even on a cold winter's night it should be running at reduced load.  If you can do this it's a good idea because it's usually colder at night and an ASHP runs less efficiently when it's colder.