How much does it cost to heat your home?

Heat pumps are the cheapest way of heating your home, reveals an analysis by University College Cork’s Paul Deane. 

Based on ROI energy data from the Sustainable Energy Agency of Ireland  the graph below shows how much a unit of useful heat costs to warm your home in Ireland, with peat costing the most and heat pumps the least. 

Source: Paul Deane UCC, costs include VAT and data is from April 2017. Associated CO2 emissions for higher and lower efficiency levels shown with black markers  

The graph compares heating costs on a common base per useful unit of heat output to a room in cent per kilowatt hour for high and low efficiency equipment (boilers, stoves, heaters, etc).

For the analysis, an assumed efficiency for the heat pump category was set at a Coefficient Of Performance of 3.

 

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Written by Astrid Madsen

Astrid Madsen is the editor of the SelfBuild magazine. She previously held the same role in an Irish trade publication, before that she worked at the National Standards Authority of Ireland. She graduated with a BA in Urban Studies from Columbia University in New York and holds an MBA from the Instituto de Estudios Bursatiles in Madrid. France of origin, she now lives in Portarlington, County Laois, where she's taken on the task of renovating a listed building! Email astrid.madsen@selfbuild.ie

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