Understanding – Kerosene bills – oil bills – heating bills

Following on from my post on electricity bills, here is one on oil bills. I have cleverly nicked a Kerosene bill from my parents… so here we go…

 

Remember kWh.

kWhs are the most common unit electricity is measure in. For me the easiest way to think about it is to think about light bulbs. If you had ten 100W bulbs, and you left them on for 1 hour, they would have consumed 1000Wh (Watt-hours), or 1kWh (kilo meaning thousand). An old one bar heater is usually a 1kW heater, meaning if it was on for one hour, that would be 1kWh. Finally if you left one 100W bulb on for 10 hours, you would consume 1kWh.

 

Well annoyingly the kerosene bill above doesn’t show kWh. In fact it doesn’t really tell you what is going on, but best I can tell, the “QTY OTDERED” line refers to numbers of litres. This 1008 litres can be converted to kWh if you have a look at my post on the “How much energy in Cars” post. It works out at

 

1008 X 10.5 =10584kWh

So my parent received 10584kWh of oil, paying €614.83 in total, or 5.8c/kW

Some oil or kerosene bills include a call out charge, but thankfully we are saved in this case.

 

So, lets compare that to Electricity costs. A KWh of electricity cost about 16.5c – 17c (when you factor in standing charges). So a kWh of electricity cost almost 3 times that of oil. Even an inefficient boiler costs less than half that of electricity. In other words, Electricity is crazy expensive. CRAZY

 

Otherwise, can I suggest that you stick a piece of paper on the wall beside your boiler. Write down each time you get a deliver and the amount you get delivered. Lots of houses get two deliveries a year, which will work out at over €1000. A very large sum.

 

Finally. Get your boiler serviced. Seriously. I know it seems like a drag, but at €100 a service, it’s still only 10% the price of the oil you buy… and can easily save you lots more