What's your Gas cost versus Electric?

[rcp]

I'm just curious as to what others are paying for their natural gas. Looking at last months bill, we used 137 CCF and had a bill of $152.37 so that gives $1.11 per CCF of Natural Gas.

Now last months electric bill was $72.25 for 1467 KWH of usage(their was some discounts in there) which gives $.049 per KWH(without the discounts, it would be $.053 per KWH).

Anyway, I was looking at the btu per CCF of Natural Gas and found that 1 CCF of Natural Gas gives 103,000 btu.

Now we've got an 80% York furnace so for every $1.11 of Natural Gas, we get .80(103,000) = 82,400 btu of heat.

Now straight electric gives 3,413 btu per KWH. So 82,400/3,413 gives 24.14 KWH of electric to give the same output of 1 CCF of Natural Gas. Multiply 24.14 x .049 gives $1.18 cost in straight electric to give the same btu output of $1.11 or 1 CCF in Natural gas.

Anway, if we had an straight electric furnace, we would have spent just $9.59 more for the month than what we did with natural gas.

Where are those big savings people like to talk about with natural gas? They sure aren't any much around here.

A Heat pump would(and does) kick Natural Gas in the @$$ around here!

I'll be using my new heat pump as much as possible thank you.<G>

[bentruler]

Its a long and complex story, but the short factors:
1) NG was so cheap exploration was pretty much stopped, just wasn't worth it. Wells do not come online overnight.

2) The only electric power plant you're gonna see a permit issued for is a natural gas one. Just think that NG can generate at today's electric prices when its $2 per Million BTU. It was last that cheap a decade ago.

3) We're at or near current capacity.

Put this together and you've seen gas rates skyrocket. It was ~20% cheaper hear a couple of years ago, and we have low demand. High demand areas... It's about $6.4 MBTU now (March delivery).

Oh, and at the same time the quality of heat pumps has doubled. Gas furnaces are pretty much capped out.

Oh, 0.08kwh. ~0.96 Therm for NG, up 12% from last year. But the main is $121K away, so I don't have any.

[BaldLoonie]

Our rates are about the same, even lower for electric heat users. That's why my heat pump is on even though it is 15 outside. I can throw a T-shirt on to avoid burning $1 gas!

[wyounger]

Same story in most of Georgia. People are still attached to their gas heat, but those that are really doing the math are finding that going all-electric is cheaper these days. A heat pump with electric backup is cheaper to run here, and if you don't have gas service, you don't pay the monthly service and distribution fees.

Our power rates actually decline with usage during the winter- so your usage beyond 1000 kwh is billed at a lesser rate than the first 1000 kwh. Gas, on the other hand, has been "deregulated" (in parenthesis because it's a misnomer); monopoly distribution but competitive provisioning of the gas itself. The effect was that you pay $20-30 a month for the privelege of having a gas meter, THEN buy your gas at $0.90-$1.00 per therm. If you can drop your gas service, it's worth about $300 a year just in fees that you aren't paying, which makes the case for going all-electric pretty strong even if operating costs were the same (and they aren't).

[sayco bob]

I recently replaced my gas/electric split system with a duel fuel Infinity split for that reason. I looked at the fuel cost of both and determined this was my best solution. I couldn’t be happier with the results.

[woody19]

Dual fuel systems have been a growing market in this location and everyone that has them are amazed at how much they save each month. I am currently building a new home with Bryant 16 seer equipment, dual fuel, with Evolution. Wouldn't go any other way.

[fat bob]

I just got billed $90 for 1097 kwh. So it looks like your electric rates are way lower than mine.

[canton100]

Bill 12/2 - 1/5 - Central Illinois

2579 KWH - $132.03 or .051 per kwh
104 Therms - $103.70 or .997 per therm

[casturbo]

Holy Cow!! Electricity less than 5 cents per kWh??!!! In Connecticut it's more like 10-12 cents per kWh. Even when oil is $1.65/gallon, heating with electricity is waaayyyy too expensive still.

If e-rates were 5 cents here, I'd heave out my oil boiler tomorrow........well, maybe not!

[rcp]

I guess I should have posted where I'm located at. Anyway, I'm located in Northeast Tennessee. I've got AEP for electric and Atmos for gas.

We are not that far from the coal mines, so maybe that helps keep the electricity cost down(maybe not). However, coal fields also produce Natural Gas as well. I guess it doesn't make any difference how close you are to where some of the Natural Gas wells are located.

I would like to see more Dams being built to generate electricity as well as perhaps harnessing the power of the ocean for electricity if possible.

If the electric companies decide to build gas powered power plants that o.k.

For some reason it seems the electric companies can negotiate a better deal with the gas companies than the consumer can get. Gee, I wonder why?<G>

[nwgasman]

Here in Oregon, gas is $1.10 for residential and around .075 per kw.

There are actually 29.29 killowatts per therm of gas (100,000 btus) so the comparison here would be:

gas=$1.10
electricity=$2.19

As stated above, this is fuel cost only

Electric generation is, and will continue to put pressure on nat gas prices. Look for more imports of LNG (liquified Natural gas) from oversees...

[tuccillo]

Originally posted by nwgasman
Here in Oregon, gas is $1.10 for residential and around .075 per kw.

There are actually 29.29 killowatts per therm of gas (100,000 btus) so the comparison here would be:

gas=$1.10
electricity=$2.19

As stated above, this is fuel cost only

Electric generation is, and will continue to put pressure on nat gas prices. Look for more imports of LNG (liquified Natural gas) from oversees...

I see lots of people choose LP for their hot water heater in new contruction. LP is $2.00/gallon, electric is $0.085/kwh. Cheaper to generate hot water with electricity plus the hot water heaters are lower cost and you dont need a roof penetration for the vent.

[suemarkp]

Originally posted by nwgasman
There are actually 29.29 killowatts per therm of gas (100,000 btus) so the comparison here would be:

gas=$1.10
electricity=$2.19


But your gas furnace isn't 100% efficient whereas the electric ones are. So you need to apply a factor to that gas usage of around 10% depending on the type of furnace you have.

[fortressofcomfort]

Baltimore

elec = 4.8 cents / kwh
gas = 81 cents / therm

Don't forget distribution charges.

Gas was 37 cents/ therm here back in 1999.

Around here it's close. Glad to have nat gas as cold as it's been around here (single digits at night). The xl13i in my old house worked pretty well enough until <20F

Insulation is the key to saving money.

[rcp]

I do need to upgrade the insulation.

I also have a question about my 80% York Gas furnace. It gets it's combustion air from the air in the basement. This air has to be replaced from somewhere, and I'm thinking it's putting pressure to bring the air in from outside.

When they figure out the 80% efficiency, do they take the fact that it's causing outside air to enter the house into the 80% efficient calculation?

Knowing that the outside air could be all kinds of different temperatures, how could they possibly include it in their 80% efficient calculations?

Anyway, causing 15 degree air(your pick here) to be forced into the house can't really be helpful when heating a house!

Support Global Cooling buy a heat pump!<G>

Randall

[41gasman]

Does anybody out in internet land know
of some software that I can get my
hard drive on that will let me compare
fuel costs, efficiency percentages,
seer ratings.Verses inital investment.
Meaning how long to payback.
I would like to be able to compare
things like 80% verses 90%.
or 90% veres 10 seer verses 14 seer
or 16 seer and the like.

[nwgasman]

I like this calculator. I think it's based off of Carriers program.

http://www.airmechanicalinc.com/calculators.html

I'm not aware of any software that addresses payback based on efficiencies and fuel costs. You might have to do the math yourself...

[Edited by nwgasman on 01-27-2005 at 07:05 PM]

[sayco bob]

Here is a link for an energy savings calculator from energy star. they also have a gas furnace and heat pump version. It is an excel spread sheet that you can copy to your hard drive.http://www.energystar.gov/ia/business/bulk_purchasing/bpsavings_calc/Calc_CAC.xls

[wildbill99]

I am in the Kansas City area and our gas is $0.89/CCF and electric is on a sliding scale. It goes up with usage in the 4 summer months, but down the rest of the year.

Increment winter cost is 3.057 cents after 845 kwh.

I was really surprised when I worked out the nubmers.

I was thinking of going with dual fuel.

But after seeing those I am going to heat pump with resistive backup.

[jim_schmidt]

Energy cost isn't everything when it comes to heating/cooling. If you take $20/month savings, you could be exchanging it for value that is hard to quantify, like happiness and comfort.

We have an all electric geo, and it does save us some money. But I'd rather have gas.

[jesup]

Philadelphia burbs (former PECO area):

Normal rates ~0.13/KWh (includes all distribution charges)
Electric heat rate: ~0.14/KWhr summer, ~0.063 winter (above first 600KWhr). Note that a friend with a condo which has a dual-fuel HP (10 Seer 2.5 ton unit with oil(?)-fired aux) just got PECO/Exelon to switch him to the Electric hear rate (and yes, he told the guy who came out about the aux heat setup).

PECO negotiated slowly lowered surcharges to cover their nuclear investments in exchange for allowing competition (which mostly fizzled so far) and in exchange for scheduled reductions in their rates in general. The various competitors don't offer the special electric rate (of course). You can buy wind power by basically adding $0.025 to any number of KWHrs you want to (or 100% of your usage).

Without the break for electric heat, the cost would be crippling to use heat pumps for us (4100 sq ft old very leaky home with 75+ windows - and yes, we're working on the sealing and insulation as we get chances). We have two 2-stage carriers (3 and 5 ton) and a slightly older 10 SEER Trane (4 ton). We also run a modern 70+% efficient wood stove (non-CAT) in the section fed by the 5-ton when the temps are 30's or below (small woodstove; EPA rated at ~24K BTU but maxes out at close to 40K BTU with dry hardwood). It keeps the 5-ton out of aux even in low single digits, and in the teens/20s can get the 5-ton to shut off a fair bit of the time. (The variable-speed fan is left 'on', of course, though temps are more uneven when the woodstove is providing the bulk of the heating; no surprise.)

By replacing two older HPs plus the baseboard electric/wall-AC in 1200 sq ft of the house with the two new HPs, and adding the wood stove and correcting some serious return duct problems (don't you love drawing attic air instead of indoors air?), our peak heating bill has gone from ~$1200/month to ~$450-600/month - plus increased comfort.

The house is still quite leaky; before a recent heavy round of caulking and sealing an energy audit only managed to pull ~20K (?) pascals, instead of the 40K (?) they normally use to get a reading, with the fan on max and the central section closed from the two wings as best we could. We also replaced 4 large bubble skylights in the sunroom (8x25') with modern ones, and insulated the sunroom ceiling which was just 2x6's with shingles nailed to them. Now it has ~3" of polyiso foam boards; R21+ (excluding the skylights, of course). The adjoining den has two 16' long outside walls which were uninsulated cinderblock (around 12" thick hollow core); we added 1" polyiso boards there. The sunroom work also fixed a lot of leaks in the mostly-glass outside wall.

One saving grace of the house is considerable passive-solar due to orientation and terrain (SE facing ridge, deciduous trees especially to the south and southwest). On a sunny not-too-cold day (say 35), two of the three heat pumps often will turn off entirely starting around 9-10am, and the temp in the greatroom can hit 75 with a thermostat only set to 70ish.

[wildbill99]

I am in the Kansas City area and our gas is $0.89/CCF and electric is on a sliding scale. It goes up with usage in the 4 summer months, but down the rest of the year.

Increment winter cost is 3.057 cents after 845 kwh.

I was really surprised when I worked out the nubmers.

I was thinking of going with dual fuel.

But after seeing those I am going to heat pump with resistive backup.

Interesting to see the changes over the years.


Right now our gas is 0.54/CCF.

Besides gas purchase gas cost being down the rates where restructured cost of operating the local distribution system was moved from a usage rate to part of the fixed monthly charge. So we pay a $25 fixed. Also changes the picture cost saving with making energy savings.

I know one person that had dual fuel HP and electric WH and they have the gas disconnected for about 6-7 months a year because of the large fixed cost.

I need to look up the exact rates and they just went up. But I think that the incremental electric winter rates are now about 4.3/kWh.

And in the last couple of years there have been lots of new NG discovered so the price pressures will be low.

But we are mostly coal for electric and with the current political climate there will be lots of pressure on electric rates.

[wraujr]

All rates are "delivered" = "commodity" + "delivery" that apply per kwh or therm.
Does not include flat rate gas or flat rate electric fee. This has to be paid just to have service no matter how much you use.

Assumes COP of 3.25 at 35 deg for HP and furnace at 95%.

For June of '09 (not a heating month)
16.042 cents / kwh delivered
82.895 cents / therm delivered

For January of '09 (definitely a heating month)
15.156 cents / kwh delivered
128.759 cents / therm delivered

Major Heating months are November thru March

38802

Summary last winter, gas was cheaper
Winter before that it was a dead heat (pun intended)
Winter before that electric was cheaper.....

So I picked gas to heat 'cause its so toasty warm... :)