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Lately, due to many geopolitical and economical reasons, we've witnessed a wild increase in power cost, especially in Europe. This increase, did increase our heating bills, and unfortunately they are keep standing unreasonably high. Having these issues as a major problem for most households, there is an increasing need to lower the heating cost into bearable numbers. This article, makes use of a household heating cost calculator developed and available online at this link. While simple and easy to use, it's precision gave us a powerful tool to analyze which heating method is more cost effective. Different fuels and different heating mechanisms do actually have a major impact in the heating costs of households. By using this calculator, we were able to find the most cost-effective way to heat our houses, so that people can have a better understanding of the available technologies and their impact on our heating bill. Firstly, the general method of calculating the heating cost, as well as the basic assumptions made in the analysis. It is very important that although these numbers appear simplistic and general, they indeed are precise, and can give a first understanding on the volume of heating costs involved, as well as the impact of the different technologies in reducing our bills.
The total energy needed to heat the house is calculated by multiplying the heating power needed per square meter, by the total area in square meters, multiplied by the total hours per day that the heating system will be in use. This way the total energy needed is obtained. Now we need to keep in mind, that different fuels have different amount of energy stored inside them. That means that we need to burn a different amount of petrol to have the same amount of energy provided by a liter (or cubic meter) of natural gas. The same applies to many different fuels. With that in mind, we need to use the energy stored in each fuel in order to do a comprehensive analysis. The heating cost calculator, includes all these necessary data on the energy content on each fuel.
Now, based on the energy needed to calculate the house, we can find the amount of fuel that is required. Having the cost of the fuel per amount of fuel, and using that during our calculations can provide us the answer of the total cost of that specific heating method. Keep in mind, that the efficiency of heating methods is a really important variable in the current analysis. While we have found the total amount of energy required to heat our household, we need to ammount the losses of each different heating method. That means, that the energy required for each fuel is different than the total energy required, and this ammount is more in most cases.
Now with the following analysis we can find out the real ammount of energy needed for each different heating method. In this article, we will analyse 4 different heating methods, namely Petrol, Electricity, Pellets and Heat pumps. The following data is used:
Petrol 12.8 kWh per Liter
Natural Gas 10.8 kWh per Cubic meter
Pellet heating System 4.37 kWh per kg
The following data have been used regarding the efficiency of the different heating mechanisms:
Electricity 0.96
Petrol 0.7
Natural Gas 0.95
Pellets 0.85
Heat Pump (COP = 3)
Based on this data, we can do the analysis to find out the actual heating costs by using different methods. Now let's go to the calculation steps, by using the aforementioned data.
Electricity Cost = (Total Energy Needed / Electricity Efficiency) × Electricity Cost per kWh
Petrol: Cost = ((Total Energy Needed / Petrol Efficiency) / (Energy Content of Petrol / Seconds in an Hour)) × Petrol Cost per Liter
Natural Gas: Cost = ((Total Energy Needed / Natural Gas Efficiency) / (Energy Content of Natural Gas / Seconds in an Hour)) × Natural Gas Cost per Cubic Meter
Pellets: Cost = ((Total Energy Needed / Pellet Efficiency) / Energy Content of Pellets) × Pellet Cost per kg
Heat Pump: Cost = (Total Energy Needed / COP) × Electricity Cost per kWh
House area : 55 square meters.
Type of insulation : Well insulated (65 W/m2)
Time that the heating system is used per day: 8 hours.
Price of electricity per KWh : According to the european commision, the EU average price in the second half of 2023 was €0.2847 per KWh. Click here for more information (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics)
Average price for light heating oil: According to statistics, Average price for light heating oil in Germany from during April 2024 was €1.05 per liter.(https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330038/light-heating-oill-average-price-germany/)
Price of natural gas per KWh :The average price in the EU on second half of the year 2023 was €0.1125 per KWh. That converted to price per m2 is : €1.215 per m2 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Natural_gas_price_statistics
Price of pellets per kg: According to The average price (gross) for pellets of a batch of 26 tons in January 2023 was €483 per ton, which translates to 0.483€ per kg. https://www.globalwoodmarketsinfo.com/pellet-prices-in-europe-continue-to-decline-at-the-beginning-of-2023/
By using the heating cost calculator, we have the following results:
Annual cost using electricity: $1301.30
Annual cost using petrol: $526.04
Annual cost using natural gas: $579.67
Annual cost using pellets: $576.54
Annual cost using heat pump: $416.42
Cheapest solution : Heat Pumps are 27% cheaper than pellets, 26.9% cheaper than Petrol, 68% cheaper than electricity, and 9.2% cheaper than Natural Gas.
Most expensive solution : electricity.
Natural Gas, Pellets, and light petrol oil have less than 2% difference in their cost effectiveness.
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The development team of Domycalculations.com