Last October my electric dryer gave up the ghost and I did a fuel cost comparison for 1,000,000 btus of electricity and gas.
The usage for October of last year was:
$47.50 for 287 kwh= $48.51 per million btus
$55.72 for 37 therms = $15.06 per million btus
This makes electricity 3.22X more expensive than natural gas.
I took my bill for October this year and ran the numbers.
$45.62 for 257kwh = $52.62 per million btus.
$44.84 for 27 therms = $16.61 per million btus.
This makes electricity 3.13x more expensive than natural gas.
It looks like it closed a little. This may be due to higher taxes or lower actual usage spreading out fixed fees per btu. It looks like I'm still pretty ahead using gas.
For giggles I looked up the state average cost per gallon of heating oil. This used to be right on to what I paid when I burnt it in the boiler. The average cost was $3.836 per gallon and that works out to $27.66 per million btu. I didn't realize that oil was still so much cheaper than electricity... well at least it is in my area.
Last year I had to do all the calculations by hand, which wasn't bad, but time consuming. This year I found this site which does it for me. It also lets you calculate the cost of running a boiler/furnace per million btus and burning wood per million btus based off the efficiency of your wood/pellet stove. Check it out!
www.eia.gov/neic/experts/heatcalc.xls
The usage for October of last year was:
$47.50 for 287 kwh= $48.51 per million btus
$55.72 for 37 therms = $15.06 per million btus
This makes electricity 3.22X more expensive than natural gas.
I took my bill for October this year and ran the numbers.
$45.62 for 257kwh = $52.62 per million btus.
$44.84 for 27 therms = $16.61 per million btus.
This makes electricity 3.13x more expensive than natural gas.
It looks like it closed a little. This may be due to higher taxes or lower actual usage spreading out fixed fees per btu. It looks like I'm still pretty ahead using gas.
For giggles I looked up the state average cost per gallon of heating oil. This used to be right on to what I paid when I burnt it in the boiler. The average cost was $3.836 per gallon and that works out to $27.66 per million btu. I didn't realize that oil was still so much cheaper than electricity... well at least it is in my area.
Last year I had to do all the calculations by hand, which wasn't bad, but time consuming. This year I found this site which does it for me. It also lets you calculate the cost of running a boiler/furnace per million btus and burning wood per million btus based off the efficiency of your wood/pellet stove. Check it out!
www.eia.gov/neic/experts/heatcalc.xls
