 | UK Natural Gas Prices, Already at Historically High levels, Set To Rise | The Oil Drum | Oilwatch Monthly - March 2008 |  |
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I'm curious to see what our, campus, weather station summary says in a few days.
I found the winter - WIMPY. Skiing in the heart of winter wasn't as bad as the past 2 years - but not what I've come to expect for most of the past 40 years.
We had a late blast of snow - unusual but going fast with the rain today. I'm usually on my summer bike right now - but it'll be another week.
My judge of winter is how much the furnace runs. We never really hit any cold weather. It only dropped to about -20C; far from the -30C that I consider to be "cold". When the furnace is on 50% of the time and when it's coming on at night to keep the house at 14C then I consider it cold. We didn't hit either of those conditions this winter.
I see natural gas prices are going up.
A friend is moving from a gas furnace to geothermal. $28k to drill a handful of wells (ultrasonic) in the driveway or $21k to trench the yard into a mess. Sure there are $7k in government incentives; and I'm not sure how they expect an 8 year payback on an outlay of about $14k. Ok they're assuming that they'd otherwise have to spend about $5k replacing the furance/AC - so that's $9k to pay back. But saving almost $1k/yr is unimaginable. Heating my home is $350/yr in gas (and about $35 in electricity for the #@$#@$ energy gobbling furnace with A/C motors) and this friends home is 3x larger; but still ..... It'll be interesting to see what happens to their electricity bill. At my home the connection fee for natural gas is something like 30% of our total bill right now.
Don't know where you live, but here in the US Midwest it's been a long, cold winter. My last monthly gas bill was north of $300 for my 2500 square foot house.
It was a hard winter for heating oil users in the northeast too. Next winter could see a full-blown crisis where gas and oil are used for home heating.
Your heating costs are extremely cheap. Here in Texas, during the winter, I spend $300-$400 a month for natural gas to heat my home at
70 deg. F. Granted I have an old home but this is similar to what others pay in the area. In the summer, the electric bill can get up to
$600 for air conditioning.(78 deg. F. on the thermostat).
We pay 16.9 cents per kilowatt.
Here in Texas, during the winter, I spend $300-$400 a month for natural gas to heat my home at 70 deg.
70 huh? 45 degrees. All winter long.
(Why? Don't like sending money to the energy company)
Go read some historic documents about room temp. 70 would have been considered warm.
We spend about $2,500/yr on heating oil. I can ceratinly see how a $14,000 investment would pay itself back in 8 years. It would probably be even faster than that with oil as expensive as it is. I think the last oil bill we got was listed at $4.00/gallon. At 150+ gallons per delivery, that's over $600. We get 5-6 deliveries a year.
We've had a remarkably warm winter. Maximum NG bill has been $89 (heat and hot water). Electricity has been up to $95/month. I installed a new timer thermostat last year and have seen the energy usage drop (therms, less so on kWh). Overnight temp 65°F, daytime allowed to float down to 62°F on the days when I'm not home. Otherwise, occupied 67-68°F.
That combined with less hysteresis in the thermostat (old mercury bi-metal coil versus thermistor) has helped cutdown both the temperature swings when the furnace is running and the amount used in the off hours
My wife and I just put in a ground-sourced heat pump in our Michingan home. You are right in that the payoff is on the order of 20 or so years, which is true for us since we do not get a subsidy.
However, we put the unit in for two reasons. First I work on environmental issues and it is the most responsible thing to do. Second, I expect that energy prices will double and then triple within the next 5 to 10 years. Thus, the payoff time will decrease to well under 10 years if energy prices increase we expect.
Our unit has 4 wells 150 feet deep each (a four ton unit) and it cost us $23,000 total. Our heating bills decreased from a high of $225/month (with an old 65% efficient natural gas furnace) in mid-winter to $75/month today with this new system. I don't know what the savings would be for air conditioning since we did not have an air conditioner before.
Retsel
Well here in Oz we have had another summer that is the hottest on record according to the met bureau. It doesn't feel like it here near Sydney, it has been a cool wet summer. Thankfully the rain has brought the dams up to 2/3 full (up from 30%).
I read the BBC article on arctic ice. Astonishing. I would have thought that it would have substantially recovered this "cold" winter.