Gas and electric have been the UK’s two most popular heating choices for many decades now.
If we’re honest, whilst electric has put up a decent enough fight, it has been a pretty one-sided battle between the two for some time now. Gas boilers are simply cheaper to run, with a unit of gas costing over 2 times less than a unit of electricity, even with the recent surge in global gas prices.
Gas boilers also tend to be far more powerful and efficient in terms of heat production than their electric counterparts.
At CHS Glasgow we are one of Scotland’s leading providers of boiler installations, repairs, and replacements, so it will come as no surprise that we are championing the benefits of gas central heating. That said, it is pretty easy to do so when gas outperforms electric heating in pretty much every category you could possibly think of.
There is a reason, after all, that around 85% of UK homes are currently connected to the gas network.
Are there any benefits of electric radiators over gas boilers?
Yes. But they are few and far between. One of the common claims you will here from electric heating manufacturers is that electric heating is more energy efficient than gas heating. This is completely true. Electric radiators are 100% energy efficient, meaning that every single unit of electrical energy you purchase from the national grid or produce using a renewable energy source is converted into heat energy. Impressive right?
Sure, but less so when you realise that new combi boilers can achieve efficiency levels of up to 94%. Gas boilers are never going to achieve 100% efficiency purely due to the small amount of heat lost in the production process, but there is only a 6% difference between the efficiency of the most efficient gas boilers and an electric radiator.
On the other hand, there is over a 300% difference between the price of gas and the price of electric. Even if gas boilers only achieved 50% efficiency, it would still be more cost effective to generate heat using gas than electric purchased from the grid.
The exception to this rule is when the electricity used to power electric radiators is not purchased from the grid but rather generated by a renewable energy source such as Solar PV panels.
Many people point to the rise in renewable energy technology as a sign that electric radiators powered by renewables is the future and gas is on the way out.
What they fail to mention is that there are plenty of renewable energy solutions that can be combined with a gas boiler system. Air source heat pumps, for example, can be used to create a hybrid heat pump system alongside a gas boiler system.
With so many people in the UK choosing the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of gas over electric at this present time, it is much more likely that these hybrid systems will be the future rather than ripping millions of boilers out of homes across the nation.
