Over the past year, the net effect of energy costs to heat our homes has increased by over 40% if you are in the Mid-Hudson valley of New York State and using #2 fuel oil or Propane as your primary fuel. This is a pretty hefty increase… What can you do?
As a veteran of the heating business for 30-plus years, a few things come to mind for me that may not be quite as obvious to the average reader. By the way – if you are lucky enough to be a natural gas customer, your total fuel cost has seen a decline over the last year. There is an unprecedented and widening spread between natural gas and fuel oil /propane that I have not seen in my career. The graph below shows the comparison of where we are at the moment for the most common fuels.
I don’t usually put so many graphs in a blog post, but “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and this is pretty dramatic stuff (full text available at http://www.nyserda.org). If this phenomenon is not putting a bite on your wallet, I don’t know what is. Reasons are another whole discussion, but the real question is how to survive the present and look to the future and decide on a prudent course of action. For most people, this is going to impact their budget in a big way and you are not as helpless as you think.
There are a few basic things that jump out from the preceding graphs and are worthy of consideration:
1. If you are on, or near, a natural gas line, start thinking hard about converting. The five-year average makes this a compelling argument for a quick payback.
2. One of the charts above shows a comparative cost per million BTUs of energy. There are previous posts on how hard it is to compare the price of different fuels, but this chart makes it simple. The take-away is… if you don’t use a million BTUs, you will see a big drop in your energy cost overall, so CONSERVE. We have a lot of ways to show you how to do that without spending a lot of money.
3. If you have central air conditioning, consider upgrading to a heat pump. The price of oil creates a very quick payback for a central air to heat pump upgrade, which could supplement your oil or propane heating system a great deal of the year and lower your total energy cost substantially.
There you have it; the stark reality of our new world and few of the many ways you have some control over your energy destiny. Why wait? Consider a home energy audit to evaluate your home’s overall energy efficiency and to determine how to best reduce consumption and costs.
Next Week: How a Heat Pump can supplement your oil or propane system.
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Tags: Energy Efficiency, heat pumps, Heating, natural gas, oil heat
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