New York Oil is cheaper

I have an oil burner for aux heat. I did some calculations now that oil is $1.50. It's cheaper to run the oil burner as my main source of heat. The electric bills running the geo compressors are just more than cheap oil. Also, the house heats much faster with oil, than it does with geo.

 

Got to do what is the cheapest, right....

 

cheapest fuel wins.

 

I loved my oil boiler at .98 a gallon. I went geo at 3.65 a gallon. I vowed to never heat with a commodity again.
Eric

 

Id be heating with oil if I had both in my house. That being said I do not in any way miss the idea of 400 gallons of oil in my basement.

I drove by a place 2 nights ago that was $1.29 a gallon. Im sure that works out cheaper then .15c electricity.

I can remember running down stairs 3 years ago when we had a earthquake wondering if the tanks were still upright.

 

I do not miss the annual price haggling nor the subtle scent of #2 oil in the basement. Sometimes it's not always about the $$. If it was, I'd be riding my bike to work.

 

Here is a great calculator for comparing different fuels for heat. Make sure you input your local costs and best estimate of efficiency. Remember afue boiler efficiencies are rarely achieved in a typical home. Garbage in garbage out.

http://nhclimateaudit.org/calculators.php

 

Why do we always do what is cheapest? Why don't we learn from history?

 

Man I'm spoiled with my cooperatives dual fuel program. They charge me $0.0662 per kwh for my geothermal.
(It's almost like doubling my COP before I even turn them on.) $0.11 per kwh for everything else.

Might want to talk to your provider and see if they have any programs.

 

Holy crap, wish First Energy/Ohio Edison would do a program like that! Nope, too much money lost by not charging the full 14c/kW they get you for now!

 

We moved to AEP country and have a city wide $0.07.xxx rate. I am now on electric base board. I will change that to Comfort Cove Electric radiant ASAP. I do not miss the masked bandits at First Energy. They got away with keeping coal plants and their two broken nuke plants and saddling the rate payers with the loss from their poor business plan from now on with rate increases as deemed needed by the guys in Akron. That is until either or both nuke plants enlarge Lake Erie or we run out of coal.

Mark

 

Just a matter of time Doc.

 

15 degrees out, my geo runs continually. If I run the oil burner for aux heat, the burner cycles not too often. 180 degree water temperature. There is so much residual heat in the boiler, it just keeps pumping out heat. The geo compressors just run & run & run, and my electric meter just spins & spins. I wish there was an easy method to calculate cost, but since I started running geo, my electric bill tripled.

Interesting I have a 275 gallon tank in the basement, with a 15 year old burner. There is no oil smell what so ever. Any smell of oil indicates a leak.

 

Not sure what you are trying to tell here. That burning hydrocarbons works and indeed releases energy in form of heat? And that a geo heatpump should be designed to run continuously on the coldest days of the year?

 

Typically a geo unit is sized just slightly less then your worst coldest day. Typically a old oil burner is sized to heat 3 of your houses. So yes a geo will run 24-7 when it's cold that's normal. And a oil burner will run a few minutes here and there. That's also normal.

At your current oil price it's believable that oil is cheaper to heat with then Geo.
That wasn't the case for the last decade or so.
Enjoy the oil while it's cheap I'm sure the price will climb again, maybe after this election year is over.

I chose to install Geo after propane hit $5 per gallon. And of course my first winter with geo it's about $1.25 per gallon last time I looked. I'm still saving money with geo but the saving will be much higher when LP Goes back up.

 

Not cheaper for me. Delivered oil here (Virginia) is ~$2.20, if a gallon gives ~110,000 Btu at 80% efficiency, that's $2 per 100,000 Btu. At say COP=3, geo will yield 30 kWh or ~100,000 Btu of heat from 10 kWh of power. In winter, Dominion charges 11 cents for first 800 kWh and 9 cents after that, so let's say 10 cents average, so $1 per 100,000 Btu. Also, burning 1 gallon of fuel oil emits 22 lb CO2, whereas 10kWh of power corresponds to emissions of 8 lb, with Dominion's current mix of sources. Natural gas seems to be about on a par with geo in price - except that I'd be paying an additional $200/year just for the gas connection.

 

How does 8.2 lbs of fuel oil create 22 lbs of CO2? I'm not trying to be snide. I just remember from school something about laws of conservation. Does that figure include all the CO2 emissions required to produce and deliver the fuel oil?

 

Why are you residential users of oil so concerned with CO2 emissions? (or past users of oil). Residential is so insignificant. My concern is $$$$$$$$ Money !!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I ran Propane till I bought my geo. Still cheaper for me to run geo in this market. The amount of propane we used to heat our house, it wouldn't be worth the switch back to propane until it was under $.50 a gallon.

 

https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/co2_vol_mass.cfm

When fuel oil Cx-Hx (essentially chains of hydro carbons) is burned it creates a chemical reaction with oxygen (O2), it is converted to carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor (H2O). The very light Hydrogen atoms (molecular weight around 1) is separated from the Carbon atom and replaced by two much heavier Oxygen atoms (each having a molecular weight around 16). Combustion of one kilogram of fuel oil yields 3.15 kilograms of carbon dioxide gas. Carbon dioxide emissions are therefore 3.15 times the mass of fuel burned. Heating oil is even a bit more, due to more hydrocarbons.