Oil Cost Comparison

[Slickcraft]

And here is another site where you can plug in the numbers:
http://nepacrossroads.com/fuel-compa...calculator.php

In my case:

just paid $1.90/gal for oil, furnace just measured at 84%. Result is $16.31 per mil btu.

Just got pellets for $260/ton, stove is listed by EPA at 78%. Result is $20.20 per mil btu.

Agree that pellet btu/lb is variable but not enough to tip the balance at today's prices.

[ishoot308]

Originally Posted by Slickcraft

And here is another site where you can plug in the numbers:
http://nepacrossroads.com/fuel-compa...calculator.php

In my case:

just paid $1.90/gal for oil, furnace just measured at 84%. Result is $16.31 per mil btu.

Just got pellets for $160/ton, stove is listed by EPA at 78%. Result is $20.20 per mil btu.

Agree that pellet btu/lb is variable but not enough to tip the balance at today's prices.

You mean $260.00 per ton for pellets correct? If not I want to know where you got them!!😜

Dan

[Slickcraft]

Originally Posted by ishoot308

You mean $260.00 per ton for pellets correct? If not I want to know where you got them!!��

Dan

Yikes, yes. The correct value was used in the calculations. Prior post edited to correct.

[BroadHopper]

http://thecitizen.villagesoup.com/p/...winter/1423566

The article predict up to 25% drop in heating oil prices. Others to follow and not much of a drop in electricity.

[brk-lnt]

If you want to really get down to the details, you have to look at the operating cost of the furnace/stove as well.

Our house has 2 oil furnaces, and Harman stove (which is mostly for heating a large room at one end of the house). From doing my generator setup I realized that the furnaces actually use a LOT of electricity (relatively speaking) just to operate. I forget the exact data, but I recall each furnace using about 3x the wattage of the Harman stove (other than startup of course, the stove lights the pellets via electric current). It makes sense, the furnace has a large blower, plus the oil pump/ignition and the Harman has a small blower and the pellet feed motor.

If the price of oil and pellets are within a few % of each other it's probably a wash in terms of TOTAL operating cost. If oil drops significantly below pellets it might make sense to save the pellets.

You also have a sunk cost with the pellets, you're out that dough and using oil will burn (pun intended) even more money.

Overall it seems like it's in the "not worth worrying about it" range. Although if oil drops back to around $1.25 or less per gallon a better conversation might be "should I buy a couple of extra 250gallon tanks and stock up?"

[BroadHopper]

http://www.unionleader.com/Electric-...break-on-rates

Not much of a decrease from Eversource because of the Bow plant. There are plans in the works to extend the natural gas pipe lines to Bow to convert to natural gas, but that depends on approval of the pipelines.

[Blue Thunder]

I'm still going with pellets this year but I'm not buying my 4 tons in advance. The current $260-300 price point is just ridiculous. Oil will stay down until after the Election next year. There are pellets everywhere that just aren't selling and they can sit there as far as I'm concerned.

BT