Cheapest fuel to use?

[Gareth56]

In these days of increasing fuel prices it got me wondering which is cheaper to use to boil 1L of water, gas or electricity? Also what data would you need? I assume the calorific value of the gas in Joules would be needed also the Specific Heat Capacity of water and would you require the volume of gas used?

 

It's far easier to calculate the amount of electricity used you just look at how many revolutions your electricity meter makes.

[iNow]

I think it depends on your source of electricity. Since you are using cost as your normalizing unit in these measurements, the answer depends completely on how much your electricity costs. Also, you need to differentiate between consumer cost and production cost (or, add them together). This would apply whether using electricity from coal (cost to dig, transport, process, transmit to consumer), wind (development, implementation, infrastructure enhancement, transmission), solar (materials, factory setup, transport, install, etc.)...

 

Not likely the answer you wanted, and I'm sorry for that, but it really depends on what "costs" are in your area and also how far down the rabbits hole you want to account for costs (where is it appropriate to begin and end the calculation... do you start at the electric company and what they charge to the consumer, or do you start at the point where the source of the energy must be mined, or where you send people to find available mines, or where you develop the mine finding technology, or where you see fish coming out of the ocean for the first time in evolutionary history ).

[Klaynos]

Gas kettles tend to heat the environment significantly more than electric ones. In the UK electric ones have always been claimed to be cheaper.

[DJBruce]

Here is a link with some actual data which seems to say a gas oven is cheaper in the long run but the electric oven is cheaper for baking.

 

http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cooking.html

[Gareth56]

I was just wondering also what data you would need to make a somewhat accurate estimate of which is cheaper. Presumably you would need the calorific value of the gas and the specific heat capacity of the water in joules, obviously one has to ignore the heat loss to the surroundings to a certain extent.

[swansont]

If you're doing an identical task, then the task itself doesn't matter. That will come into play if there are different efficiencies in doing the task, but you can still treat that as a general condition. You're just looking for cost per some unit of energy.

 

http://www.npga.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=914 gives some numbers in terms of millions of BTUs (because it's US and we're idiots, not using metric) and according to that, natural gas is less than half the cost of electricity here.