I’ve heard that natural gas is both cheaper and more efficient than other sources of home power like electricity. Is this true? Are home appliances that use natural gas also more efficient? Is it worth it to switch?
Also: IE crashes a -lot- while I’m at the SDMB. Has anyone else had this problem before?
I am using IE and not crashing it. I tried Mozilla for a while and it has a nasty habit of disabling my mouse.
I would have to take on the natural gas thing. It figures that it ought to be more efficient to heat with it than convert to electricity and use that. It is not obvious for something like a gas refrigerator.
IE doesn’t run well on natural gas.
There are natural gas power plants, but people don’t run generators to power their homes off the stuff. They do use it for heat, cooking and hot water though, where it is very efficient. Modern technology also makes oil a lot more efficient than it used to be, but I’m fairly certain that natural gas is the cleaner-burning of the two.
Natural gas can be used fo a standby home generator and is much better for standby apps then gasoline
But as far as NG and savings
Typically top of the line NG efficency is now slightly less then top of the line oil, but by a very slim margine. Most people can’t even use the top of the line equiptment anyway because their existing chimey would have to be replaced too. And for those who can use it usually won’t because of the upfront cost and the ongoing cost to keep it properly tuned (eff drops signifficently in these models)
So we are left with less then top of the line models for most of us, which is about the same for gas or oil.
Electric heat pump heating systems could surpass cost savings of gas or oil but can only be used down to maybe 35F (below which you have to use pure electric resistance heater $$$)
Gas’s biggest savings come from using it for cooking, Hot Water, drying & grilling. A while back I remember seeing the cost of drying electrically as about $0.75 to $1 per load and gas as $0.25 to $0.35.
I have a NG grill and it is much cheaper to use then LP units (Plus no running out of gas)
In general terms NG is cheaper for heating and cooking but I have not seem computers which can be powered by NG yet.
NG is sold by the therm:
1 therm = 10^5 BTU = 29.33 Kwh = 25194 Kcal
You can compare costs easily. Take into account the efficiency of a furnace or water heater is under 100%
Part of the problem is that natural gas prices have varied so tremendously in the last few years. This is mostly due to the wildly fluctuating prices for oil.
For instance, natural gas prices are going up currently because oil has risen, thereby making businesses switch to natural gas rather than fuel oil, thereby causing more demand for natural gas and raising the price.
Conversely, when oil is lower(remember $19/barrel not that long agao?), businesses(industry) switch to fuel oil, and natural gas is dirt cheap.
Are you certain about that, samclem? It doesn’t have anything to do with pipeline restrictions, problems at the Henry Hub, the whole California thing, gas turbines sucking the pipes dry at times (as nearly all new generating capacity in the last 15 years in the US has been gas), and so on…?
How many businesses do you know of can easily switch to and from fuel oil? I don’t know of a single one built past 1980 here in my city that can. 