is electric heating likely to become cheaper than gas heating infuture?
No is the short answer, however...
#1 Insulation makes a huge difference.
With 2009 levels of insulation very little heating is required.
#2 CO2 Heat Pump at gas boiler price will take time.
CO2 heat pumps only hit parity (1kW out for 1kW in) down at -25oC and
are thus ideally suited to the UK temperature climiate. Existing
heatpumps are R410A and expensive (£1k), not the much more expensive
CO2 (£4k). The economy of scale of CO2 Heat Pumps is some way off -
probably 15yrs.
The benefit of CO2 Heat Pumps is very high real-world CoP (4:1) from
air sources avoiding the "dig cost" of ground source heat pumps. The
long term risk of such heat pumps I suspect may be noise based - a
neighbourhood of such pumps battling a heat island effect could get
undesireable acoustics (as with windmills & geology/buildings).
#3 Storage Heaters are near parity with gas if 2009 insulation.
That is to say 5p/kWhr isn't a mile off gas at 3.5kWhr when you factor
in a) installation cost b) maintenance c) depreciation. The problem is
storage heater comfort/usability does not have parity with gas re
controllability & on-demand capability.
To get true controllability you need commercial fan storage heaters
which are very large and expensive (£750-1250), these leak very little
heat and instead blow it out on demand. Essentially a fan heater which
just happens to cost 5p/kWhr. Due to their cost they are impractical,
good for shops and offices.
Nuclear will not come online and even if it did the cost will not be
comparable to gas re debt.
A spanner is the potential for future gov't to essentially tax gas
consumed by householders rather than by power generators for "green
reasons", thereby bringing closer parity between gas & electricity.
There is no logical reason for this to happen - except to fund bonkers
windfarms & nuclear plant. It would be a dirty trick negating the
benefit of insulation, alternatively it could be the reason for doing
it "creating money out of nothing", quant-energy as it were.
Overall if you are buying a 2009 build flat, electric heating via say
Dimplex Duoheat storage heaters works supposedly well. They are
cheapish to install, no maintenance, minimal depreciation re long
lifecycle. Storage Heaters also provide objects of high thermal mass,
often missing in "minimalist apartments" when a door is opened. The
benefit of insulation is that it somewhat undermines the "need" to
have the high capital & maintenance & depreciation cost of gas boiler/
radiator system to "force enough kW in at low enough cost".
Vaillant boast their air, ground & gas heating options - it is likely
we move to heat pumps at some stage, however that is going to be "New
Build" no doubt by loony-regulation or loony-subsidy like PhotoVoltaic
panels to meet some "carbon requirement".
Put another way, cheapest is insulation - that way whatever they do it
makes screwing us harder.
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