What's cheaper, gas or electricity?

[t8769]

I live in a concrete flat.. not great for insulation its very difficult to heat, but I usually 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 the area around it, and the heating ducts (it blows hot air) 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

[Doctor Drivel]

Gas is approx 1/4 to 1/3 the price of elec. Heat by gas.

[Dave Liquorice]

Get your last gas an electric bills and compare the "unit" (kWhr) rates for gas and electric. Gas I would expect to be about 5p/unit (+/- 3p), electric 12p/unit (+/- 6p). The rest is just maths and some guesstimations, the only real way to be sure would be to use one method for a week then the other taking meter readings at the start and end of the periods. You may also need to take into account the weather, if one week colder than the other...

[Fash]

Gas is much cheaper so the system would need to be losing more than half the heat for electric heating to win. Also it's a more comfortable environment than sitting looking at an electric fire.

Turn the gas on.

Fash

[meow2222]

Quite. OTOH if you bought a heat pump, running it on leccy to heat the place might work out even cheaper.

NT

[t8769]

Thanks for the info..

I've a gas central heating unit that pumps out hot air..

Is there a rough calculation I can make regarding gas-vs-elec.. as far as heating is concerned.

CHeers

[Dave Liquorice]

As I said run a week on one system a week on the other and do the maths on actual meter readings. There are far to many variables for a simple generic formala to be of any use.

[John]

You may be better to use an electric fan heater to provide local heat - but the rest of the flat will get horribly cold.

[t8769]

Well, I only need to heat one room.

I'll see how it goes..

[Pete C]

Hi,

If an old gas boiler it's efficiency could be around 65%, so you'd be pretty unlucky to get less than 50% in the one heated room.

That said old boilers tend to lose heat up the flue when the burner's not firing.

So as long as electric is more than 2x the cost of gas it would be cheaper to use the gas boiler in colder weather.

For mild weather and taking the chill off the room, the electric heater could be cheaper than the boiler running for short periods or intermittently.

cheers, Pete.