Everything is going electric these days. Whether it is your car or your energy, electric devices are future for many applications. Gas boilers have been the standard installation in domestic homes for years now.
Gas is cheap at the moment, so the running costs for a gas boiler are very affordable for the general population. It is no wonder then that around 80% of UK homes are using a gas boiler for their main central heating system.
Electricity however is much more expensive than gas, fetching up to 3 times more per unit than the price of gas. So why are more people starting to switch to an electric boiler?
The main reason people are switching is because of the installation and maintenance benefits. Installation is usually cheaper and electric boilers don’t need to be serviced as heavily as gas boilers.
When it comes to efficiency, electric boilers are way ahead of their gas counterparts. Electric boilers can achieve an efficiency rating of around 99-100%, while the maximum efficiency that a gas boiler can achieve is never more than about 93%.
This means that for gas boilers, for every £1 spent on heating a property, 7p is wasted on lost energy. With electric boilers, there is almost no lost energy and therefore no money is being wasted.
The future definitely looks set to adopt the electric boiler, but at the moment, due to the cost of electricity, gas boilers are still cheaper to run and therefore more people choose to go with them.
The other consideration is the carbon emissions. Electricity in the UK is mostly generated by fossil fuels, and as a result electricity is considered a carbon intensive utility and not currently viewed as efficient.
Perhaps the best thing for domestic users is to pair the electric boiler with a solar panel system than can feed the boiler and the home.