Knowing how much your heating costs per hour is a great way to manage your heating costs more effectively and to also lower your carbon footprint. Most people are unaware of the cost per kWh of their energy. In this article, we show a few simple calculations you can do to work out your energy costs.
With the cost of living and inflated energy prices dominating media headlines and the thoughts of squeezed families, we think it’s useful to know how much your home costs to heat per hour. The average household now pays £2,500 yearly for energy, up from £1,277 last year. Although most have received £400 towards their energy bills, some have had further support.
It has been estimated that around 50% of energy bills are spent on heating and hot water. So, it makes sense to keep heating at the safest, lowest level possible. For every 1C drop on the thermostat, you could save £80 a year.
How much does it cost to heat your home?
This is quite a hard question, as it depends on a number of things:
1. How long you use your heating for
2. The temperature your heating is set at
3. The size of your home
4. How efficient your boiler is
4. How energy efficient and well insulated your home is
5. Were you live
6. The number of people in your home
While it’s quite easy to work out energy use with appliances like fridges etc, with central heating, it’s much harder as there are so many variables. You can, however, get a broad estimate – which, although not totally accurate, will give an indication. To work this out, you will need the following:
The amount of kWh your boiler is using: Most boilers are between 20-40 kWh (kWh – a kilowatt-hour is a unit of energy: one kilowatt of power for one hour.)
The cost of your energy: Due to the Government’s Energy Price Guarantee, you will currently not pay any more than 34p per kWh for electricity and no more than 10.3p per kWh for gas, which will be running your boiler. For this comparison, we are not including oil central heating.
The calculations:
The calculation is the kWh of your boiler multiplied by the price of 1kWh of gas, then divided by 100.
For example – if your boiler used 30kWh of gas per hour, and your gas cost 10.2p, it would be 30 x 10.3 = 309p, divided by 100 = £3.09 per hour to run your boiler. Run it for 5 hours (£3.09 x 5) = £15.45 etc.
Bear in mind that when a thermostat reaches a set temperature, the boiler will switch off and will fire up again when needed to keep the house at a constant set temperature. This means in the first hour or two, the cost of your heating will be much greater as the boiler is taking time and working hard to get up to temperature.
While we have shown a calculation that can be used as a simple guide, it will make much more sense to be aware of what you can do to insulate your home and how to avoid wasting energy in the first place.
