Oil central heating but getting so expensive-would it work out cheaper on electricity?

anotherquestion

HI folks, 

I have oil central heating so obviously due to world events getting really expensive.
Todays price is 
500 litres £345, or about 69p a litre.

Its going to get so much more expensive, so just thinking as I don't live in a large house, it might be better to switch to an oil filled radiator which we could use in one room at a time. Current price of a unit of electricity is about 19p per unit.

I have this oil filled radiator, 
Warmlite Tall Oil Filled Radiator with Timer, 1500 W : Amazon.co.uk: Home & Kitchen

Just wondering if anyone can tell me what the hourly rate of running this radiator might be, that's on full power for an hour, then I might be able to work out if in the near future if oil goes through the roof in price, would it be better to switch to an oil filled rad?

Thank you.

nofoollikeold

1. One unit of electricity = 1 Kilowatt hour. 
2. 1,500 watt (1.5 kW) radiator at full heat will use 1.5 Kw hours of electricity.  
3. At 19p / unit (kWh), 1.5 kWh costs 28.5 pence

Unfortunately its not quite as simple to compare heating methods as the above would suggest.  You have to use as much heat energy as your property loses (plus a little bit for warming up initially).  If you go from heating all rooms to only heating one at a time, the room you do heat will lose heat to the other rooms which are now cold(er).  If with central heating a particular room required, say, a radiator giving out 2.0 kWh, and surrounding rooms were heated to a similar temperature, you might well need 2.5 kWh heater if the surrounding rooms were colder.  The calculation can be done, but it is really quite involved.  

Ectophile

The figures on this web site are a bit out-of-date, but give an indication of the price per kilowatt hour for various different fuels https://nottenergy.com/resources/energy-cost-comparison/

Oil is still very much cheaper than electricity, though the price of both will be going up sharply.

Rdwill

I litre of oil contains about 10kwh, so on your cost about 7p per kwh.

But then you need to understand how efficient your boiler is.

While 1kwh of electric into an oil filled radiator will probably be more or less 100% efficient, 1kwh of electric in 1 kwh of heating out.

The boiler will be a lot less efficient, a certain amount of heat goes up the flue, also heating rooms and spaces you don't need, plus I bet the boiler and pumps use some electric too and make noise, which isn't heating energy coming out.

Plus there will be some 'where and tear' on the boiler, servicing because of use required etc, where as there is probably none on the oil filled radiator.

If you can work all that out, you'll probably have your answer.

GDB2222

Are there any rooms you don’t need to use? You can turn the radiators down in those rooms and shut the doors.

We have tended to become rather soft, and we should probably wear more clothes and manage with lower heating levels generally. 

Rdwill

Just to finish the sum, as much as possible.

If electric costs 19p kwh and oil costs 7p kwh and you assume the oil filled electric radiator is 100% efficient. Then the boiler system will need to be less than 37% efficient (7/19x100) for turning oil kwh into 'usable' heat kwh to make the electric cheaper than the oil.

1, I ignore the servicing cost 
2. Anything you can do to drive up the boiler efficiency, shutting off radiators, etc, will improve your sum.

theonlywayisup

anotherquestion said:

HI folks, 

I have oil central heating so obviously due to world events getting really expensive.
Todays price is 
500 litres £345, or about 69p a litre.

Its going to get so much more expensive, so just thinking as I don't live in a large house, it might be better to switch to an oil filled radiator which we could use in one room at a time. Current price of a unit of electricity is about 19p per unit.

I have this oil filled radiator, 
Warmlite Tall Oil Filled Radiator with Timer, 1500 W : Amazon.co.uk: Home & Kitchen

Just wondering if anyone can tell me what the hourly rate of running this radiator might be, that's on full power for an hour, then I might be able to work out if in the near future if oil goes through the roof in price, would it be better to switch to an oil filled rad?

Thank you.

I won't go into the calculations as others have kindly done that.

I posted about oil the other day.  69p is today's price.  Lot's of reasons why but oil can go wildly up and down.  Last year ours was INCREDIBLY cheap, almost back to the prices of the 1990's.  This will be the first time it has cost me more than 40p a litre - and I am going back 30 years.  Oil is cheap but at this moment in time it is not as cheap as it was. 

As a side note, it is almost always a few pence cheaper if you buy 900L or more.  500L means you either have a tiny tank or that you are worrying over nothing.  Half a tank of oil will last a good few months, especially in the spring/summer.  All our heat and water is oil, along with an oil fired oven (that I turn off in the summer) and half a tank will last us 5-6 months. 

Norman_Castle

anotherquestion said:

Just wondering if anyone can tell me what the hourly rate of running this radiator might be, that's on full power for an hour,

Once the room is warm the radiator linked to is unlikely to run on full power for an hour as the thermostat will control when its on.

theonlywayisup

Apropos this thread and for no other particular reason, I checked oil this morning and it was 70p.  I've just checked it again and it's 96p a litre.  

Rodders53

Kerosene price varies but I, too checked this am c.70p/l and now 75p/l in my County...  

https://homefuelsdirect.co.uk/home/heating-oil-prices/ 

Lets say that makes it 8p/kWh at the moment.  (I'm still burning through Kerosene at under 5p a kWh, though).

Leccy is close to 21p/kWh on my current SVR and on April 1st will jump to just over 29p/kWh.  So oil is still, relatively, a bargain.

My A-A heat pump is, roughly, on a par cost wise (with a COP of 4?) for me today;  and if I buy kerosene at 75p will maybe still roughly on a par.  BUT a COP 1 oil filled radiator must work out much more expensive for the same kWh of heat input to the home.

Hold on and hope for a kerosene price reduction in the Summer?