A Review of OIL WOOD COAL ELECTRICITY Heating Costs

Winter is making it’s presence known and it is an appropriate time to re-assess the means of heating for the next 7 months or so. To that end I have already been taking a look at some of the solid fuel stoves and boilers that are, in increasing numbers, becoming available to the Irish market.

With the dizzying rise in the price of heating oil, helped substantially in Ireland with taxation, two doses of carbon tax and VAT on top for icing, most of us are looking in other directions for some form of affordable heat.

Fuel poverty is a very real and growing issue in Ireland, and the Irish Government seem to have no clear strategy for dealing with it.

So this line of thinking has taken me to again look at the alternatives to oil fired central heating. Below is my stab at a basic comparative analysis of the relative costs of the more common forms of heating, with special emphasis on the forms being explored by those in or close to the fuel poverty line.

OIL HEATING – for the better off only
BALLPARK cost 12 cent per Kw/h

At the time of writing the cost of heating oil is hovering around €950 to €970 per 1000 litres. Most households require between 1500 and 2000 litres in a year. That works out at between €1455 and €1940 to heat the house for one year. Carbon taxes and 13.5% VAT adds a fair bit to the cost, and indeed puts oil out of reach of many users.

One litre of Kerosene heating oil costing 97cent, will give an total output 9.821 Kilowatts of heat for one hours duration. Or 1 Kw of heat for 9.821 hours if you like to put it the other way around. That gives you a GROSS heat output cost of 9.88 cent per Kw/h.

However, when calculating the actual heat that is delivered into a house, you have to allow for boiler efficiency losses, i.e. how much heat goes out the flue, and also allow for heat lost in the piping etc. A fair average efficiency for a modern boiler is 90% depending on the turning, cleaning. etc.. That 10% loss alone brings the cost figure up to 11 cent per Kw/h. Then additionally you have to add in the losses in the water and pipe system

At a rough guess, I would put the actual figure at around 11.75cent per Kw/h in a fairly efficient system,  and perhaps more like 13.00 cent per Kw/h in older or less well maintained systems. Let us take a ballpark figure of 12 Cent per Kw/h

ELECTRICITY
COST between 16 and 17.92 cent per Kw?h

Electricity is 100% efficient as a heating fuel. It can also be very exactly controlled and directed to where and when you need the heat without heating half the house and all the piping and the boiler itself.

Currently the standard electricity charge is 0.1792 per Kw/h but most suppliers offer discounts so you should not be paying much more than about 16.00cent per Kilowatt hour if you are savvy.

Even though electricity is a VERY expensive fuel for heating, it’s ability to be precisely controlled and timed makes it a useful adjunct to other basic heat sources.

WOOD BRIQUETTES or ECO LOGS 
BULK PRICE Cost 9.56 cent per Kw/h

Don’t bother buying those blocks on the door step, they give so little heat output they are not worth burning. Unless wood has been seasoned for two years or is kiln dried, it is worthless as a serious fuel. That is why I am concentrating on manufactured wood fuels.

The heat output of the average eco-logs or wood briquettes is generally seen to be somewhere between 4.87 Kw/h per Kg and 5.72Kw/h per Kg. Bought in tonne or 10000Kg lots and the price delivered is only 38 cent per Kg.

If we take an mid figure of 5.30Kw/h per Kg and and average stove efficiency of 75% that gives us a heat delivered price of 9.56 cent per Kw/h.

There is very variable quality in these wood briquettes and it is worth your while to make an assessment before ordering bulk.

COAL
Cost 6.2 Cent to 7.5 Cent per Kw/h.

Dirty old coal for two hundred years was – and still is the poor mans fuel. Coal, because of taxes driving the daft price of oil totally insane, has now become the major viable option for an ever increasing number of households.

There is a massive trend towards solid fuel heating and a lot of it is coal fired. Manufactured wood fuels could, if the quality and price were right, take over a large chunk of the market. However, both the quality and the price is not optimum, and therefore wood briquettes are remaining only at a novelty level in the market place.

New high efficiency multi-fuel stoves and boilers can offer up to 90% efficiency or in other words, as good as most oil heating systems.

Smokeless coal can be bought for as cheap as 35 cent per Kg. Petroleum coke smokeless mixes, such as Calco, are very efficient coals, and you could expect to get an average 7.50 kilowatts gross for an hour per kilogram. Allow for an average overall efficiency of say 75% much higher in really good stoves, and the cost is only 6.2 cents per kilowatt hour. That is less than half the current cost of oil heating. Other type of smokeless coals cost a little more.

I personally have 100% heated my house the last season with coal and saved hundreds of Euro. I intend to do the same this coming winter.

SHOCKED READERS

Some of my eco-friendly readers are shocked at my decision, I make no apology for it. If the Irish Government only removed the 13.5% VAT on wood fuels, and did something to assess and standardise wood fuel quality, they would greatly help to promote an environmentally friendly – carbon neutral home heating alternative to coal. They won’t most likely make that move – so people like myself, who have to very carefully balance our household accounts, are inclined to say – “let those that have the money worry about the planet, we’re too darn busy just surviving” Shame it has to be that way don’t you think?

You do pay a bit of a price for using coal though, coal takes a certain amount of tending and work, and it is dirty. It also creates a fair bit of ash that has to be got rid of.

BOTTOM LINE

If you need heat and you also need to save a lot of money, and you are willing to put some effort into it, solid-fuel is the way to go at the moment.  No doubt the Irish Minister for Hardship will be looking for ways to tax us some more and will probably hit coal. But then we will find some other ways around it. We are Irish after all.

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