The purchase cost of gas per kilowatt hour is on average about 4p, while the kilowatt hour price of electricity is around 15p. This means that gas will cost you about three to four times less than the same amount of energy purchased for electricity provision.
If only it was really that simple. If it was, we’d all be burning our lights, and running our television on gas. While the actual energy consumption can easily be measured, and the price compared, the way we use the energy is different, not only as a population overall, but between individual households on the very same street.
Getting the tariff right
The costs quoted are an average, and by shopping around, you may find some tariffs suit your needs better than others; something that should be looked into when setting up your providers initially. One type of tariff all consumers should explore is the dual fuel tariff. This involves taking out an energy account for both gas and electricity with the same supplier, and will result in a much cheaper overall tariff- but is gas more expensive than electric in this case?
If you live in a home with an electric cooker, and you also have a gas supply, unless there is an overwhelming reason not to do so, heating and cooking energy should be consumed using gas. Apart from the fact that cooking on gas is cheaper in terms of overall cost, gas also cooks food faster (it doesn’t take as long as electricity to heat food up).
It can be argued that using an economy seven or white meter overnight for electric heating will save you money. Even if you halve the electricity tariff to heat the home, gas will still be more cost effective. Also, during the heating hours (typically from around 11pm to 7am), the heaters and water heating constantly draw power. When gas power is used, it is invariably used on demand; this means that when you heat water on demand, you are only drawing on gas power when the water is being heated at the point of delivery.
So is gas more expensive than electric for heating? The short answer is no, as this above information rings true for gas powered heating too. Even when heating is kept on 24/7, energy is only drawn once the heat drops below a certain temperature, and the energy cuts off once the heat exceeds the temperature that it’s been set to reach. Efficient heating systems now hold the heat for longer, so using cheaper energy in short bursts makes better economic sense overall.
Cheaper at source
You should understand why gas is cheaper too. Gas is energy at source. To provide electricity, electric power stations have to be powered by a raw fuel (either gas or coal), in order to create electrical energy, so when you are paying for electricity, you are essentially paying for a refined product, that has gone through a number of transitions, before it even reaches your home.
Environmentally friendly projects, such as wind farms, are slowly bringing us to a point where the energy used to generate electricity is closer to the raw source itself (wind). This is also happening where homes are fitted with solar panels.
When considering the cost of your energy, you should also consider how you can mitigate the cost by perhaps installing a small residential wind turbine, or solar panels on the roof of your home. Most energy companies, and the ones that have stringent environmental considerations at the heart of their ethos, will have subsidies to support this kind of energy production.
Energy prices can also be affected by location. There are vast swathes of rural Britain where gas is not an energy option, unless it is brought in by a storage method, such as large canisters. Rural areas are often dotted with oil tanks, which are used to supply oil to heating systems, where the gas pipelines don’t reach such sparsely populated communities.
Is gas more expensive than electric in these rural areas? The answer is still no, because even in the larger cities, there may be reasons why gas lines haven’t been laid, possibly due to conservation areas, where the roads are cobbled, and under road mains aren’t possible. Even in these rural regions you will find that many homes still use gas for cooking, by installing portable gas canisters, as these still work out to be considerably cheaper, despite their diminutive size.
How energy is used
In reality, it isn’t just the cost of the energy that you use, but how you use it that matters. The modern gas combi boiler that heats on demand both for hot water supply, and for central heating, is far more efficient than the older gas heating systems.
The actual difference of the cost comparison means that a home which runs inefficiently on gas is still likely to produce a lower energy bill, than one that runs efficiently on electricity. The only exception to this rule is where a significant amount of electricity is sourced from PV panels.
In referencing PV panels, readers should note that these panels do not rely on direct sunlight alone to produce energy (they can even produce energy on cloudy days as well), so they are actually quite efficient, especially in the northern parts of Scotland. In fact, despite the regular cloudy weather, there is so much light that entire communities on the Scottish islands obtain all their energy requirements, solely from these panels alone.
The verdict
Whether it is being used for heating water, heating the home or cooking, or even a combination of these purposes, the natural conclusion would therefore be that gas is cheaper. This is further influenced by whether the gas is being delivered through the mains itself. This is the most common and cost-efficient method.or portable supplies and whether electricity is being sourced from a retail supplier or whether it is coming from a domestic resource such as PV and solar panels. It is also relevant to remember that water can be heated through solar panels too, so depending on where you are in Britain, you may find that the only need you have for gas will be for cooking.
The overall verdict would be to check whether you have options for a dual fuel account. You should also see whether you can offset energy bills by using natural resources, the installation of which can be subsidised, if you can find the right energy supplier.