Electric Heaters VS Central Heating. Is Gas Cheaper?

1) How do heating systems work? Gas VS Electric

Gas boilers burn gas and use the heat do transfer to water which is then pumped around your home. The water is sent throughout the central heating system where it enters each radiator in each room. The radiators transfer the heat from the water to the air and this warms your home. Burning natural gas inside a boiler is a very efficient process with most modern boiler achieving a rating of 88%-98%.

Electric boilers use a heating element to heat the water which is then pumped around our homes in the same way as a Gas boiler would do. The radiators transfer the heat in the same way and our homes are heated in the same manner. Using an Electric Boiler to heat water is very efficient indeed and typically around 98%-100% efficient in many cases.

With central heating systems, the flow pipe delivers hot water to each radiator and the return pipe collects the cooler water once it leaves each radiator. The return pipe goes back to the boiler delivering the cooler water to be reheated and sent around the system once again. The whole house can be heated this way as pipework and radiators are installed throughout the entire house.

Different rooms will have different sized radiators. Larger radiators will be required for larger rooms and small radiators for smaller rooms.

2) What is cheaper, Gas or Electric?

​Gas is cheaper. Or at least, it is where I live. 

All things considered, despite Electric boilers achieving a greater efficiency than Gas, albeit only slightly, the cost per unit of Gas and Electricity are VASTLY different meaning that the cost of heating your home will be affected depending upon which you choose.

Let’s talk about Kilowatt hours. KW/h is a Kilowatt Hour. That is the cost of using 1 kilowatt for 1 hour. So, a 1-kilowatt electrical heater run for one hour would cost 25 pence.

At the time of writing in December 2024, I am being charged 6.16 pence per KW/h for GAS and 25.01 pence per KW/h for ELECTRICITY.

GAS is definitely cheaper.

​This means that if I were to have an ELECTRIC boiler installed and use this to heat my home, the cost would be 4 TIMES as much as GAS assuming the power of each boiler was the same!!!!

3) What can I do to save money on heating?

I know that heating bills are spiralling out of control in recent years as energy costs rise drastically. Despite the energy price cap, over the winter months, many of us will see the average cost of our heating bills increase as the colder climates arrive. We will look at some ways that you can reduce your energy bills without freezing yourself. 
Electric heating systems can be expensive when compared to a large gas heater or gas boiler, there are some things you can do to cut down on heating costs with both systems.

• Check your kilowatt hour prices!
• Only heat the rooms you use
• Don't heat bedrooms
• Check your boiler controls
• Keep the heat inside

3.1) Check your Kilowatt hour prices on your energy account

​Making sure that you are on the cheapest tariff for your energy usage and needs could save a lot of money each year. Log in to your energy account or call your supplier and ask them if you could be on a cheaper rate. Shop around different energy companies to see if someone could offer you a better deal.

3.2) Only heat the rooms you use

​By only heating the rooms that you are using, you can save on heating costs. Care should be taken to ensure that damp and mould do not affect unheated rooms so keep a close eye out for this.

3.3) Don't heat the bedrooms

​Bedrooms should be slightly cooler than the rest of the house to enable us to sleep comfortably anyway but by not heating the bedrooms you can save money on energy costs. To ensure the bed is warm when you get in, you could use a hot water bottle or electric blanket to get the bed warm before you get in.

3.4) Check your boiler controls

​Make sure that your boiler controls are set according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The operating temperature and water temperatures of your boiler can affect the efficiency. Also check that your thermostat controls are not set too high, every degree higher on your thermostat can have a dramatic effect on the increased energy costs for your home.

3.5) Keep the heat inside

​Once you have paid for the heat to get into your home, you need to keep it there! Consider measures such as:

• ​Draught Excluder around doors and windows
• Curtains around windows and front doors
• Improving loft and wall insulation
• Shutting windows and doors
• Insulate your heating pipes to prevent heat escaping into floors and cold spaces

Keeping the heat inside means that you will need to run your boiler for less time thereby saving money.

4) Is an Electric Fan Heater better than a Gas Boiler?

​Whilst gas heating systems are cheaper than electric heating systems in most cases, using just one electric fan heater in a room could save money over heating a whole house using a gas boiler. 

If we consider that most Gas Boilers are around the 27KW power mark and electric fan heaters are around 2kw on average it can be cost saving using a fan heater to heat one room. 

Some experimentation may be needed in your home though.

5) ​Costs of Portable Heaters VS Gas Boilers

A 2kw electric fan heater would cost around £0.50 an hour to run continuously. 

A 27kw gas boiler would cost around £1.66 an hour to run continuously.

You do have to consider a few things before getting excited about potential cost savings though.

• By only heating one room using a fan heater, the rest of the house will be cold. Heat will spill from the room you are in into the other rooms and mean that you may have to run the electric heater for longer negating any savings. 
• Once the Gas Boiler heats your home to the desired temperature set on programmable thermostats, it will reduce the consumption of Gas or shut off completely whereas, your fan heater will not. 

• There are potential fire safety issues when using a portable heat or electric fan heaters and they are certainly not the cheapest way to heat a large house. 

   

6) Power of Electric Boilers VS Gas Boilers

One of the hinderances of Electric boilers when compared to Gas boilers is the supply availability. Most domestic homes across the world will have a single-phase electrical supply. Our domestic electric systems were never really designed to heat the whole properly home using electric radiators, a large electric boiler or purely electric heating systems. This is especially problematic these days as we have much more electrical equipment in our homes that can demand large amounts of power such as:

• Electric Vehicle Charging Equipment 
• Electric Showers
• Electric Cooking Equipment

In the UK, a single-phase supply can supply a maximum of 100 AMPS of electrical current or 23 KW of Power.

​Many Gas Boilers are rated at 25KW or more which they can comfortably use on a standard Gas supply. The biggest electric boiler you could feasibly run on an electrical supply would be a 15KW unit. Even with a slight increase in efficiency with Electric Boilers over Gas, they are still not as capable of heating your home quite as well or as quickly as a Gas Boiler.

7) Running Costs of Electric Boilers VS Gas Boilers

A 15KW Electric Boiler could cost as much as £3.75 an hour to run in 2024 / 2025.

​A 27KW Gas Boiler could cost as much as £1.66 an hour to run in 2024 /2025.

These figures are based on my energy rates that I pay in my home at the time of writing in December 2024. Also remember that the Electric boiler may well have to work harder for longer than the Gas boiler to achieve the same heat input! The electric boiler is roughly half the power of the gas boiler so costs may increases quite drastically for electric heating over gas heating.

8) Conclusion

If choosing to heat your entire home then a gas system feeding a gas boiler is likely to be the better option in the long run for these larger spaces. When heating smaller spaces, there are other options such as oil filled radiators, electric fan heaters, infrared heaters, storage heaters and more. Using less energy and therefore less money to heat your home is what we should all strive for but it’s not always cheaper to use Gas or Electric. We have to consider the cost of each KW/h for both Gas and Electric and do some quick calculations to work out the better choice for each situation. Portable electric heaters use far less power than a gas boiler but the higher cost of electricity and longer run time needed to heat a whole property (they never would) would mean massively high costs. 

If you are trying to reduce your energy consumption and your bills, then there may be help available. Check out the Energy Saving Trust https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/hub/quick-tips-to-save-energy/ for further advice.