Thread by @DavidElfstrom

1/ Looking at the sharp rise in your #Enbridge #NaturalGas bill? Wondering how it compares to electricity? Here's the conversion factors for the energy content in m3 to kWh:
Enbridge South 1 m3 = 10.88 ekWh
Enbridge North 1 m3 = 10.78 ekWh

2/ The energy content of 1 m3 of natural gas changes over time. This web page has the historical annual average values: enbridgegas.com/storage-transp…
To convert between GJ per 1000 m3 natural gas and ekWh per m3, divide by 3.6.
(1 W = 1 J/s, and 1 hour = 3600 seconds)

3/ Nearly all of the costs are m3 based. If you want to get really detailed, go to this web page: enbridgegas.com/residential/my… and enter your postal code to get the current rate breakdown. Here's the one for my region:

4/ The main charge to remove is the Customer Charge and tax. So in my case I'd take my total bill, and subtract ($23.46x 1.13), or $26.51. The effective m3 costs is $197.77 - $26.51 = $171.26. My consumption was 293m3. So effective unit cost was $171.26/293 = $0.5845/m3.

5/ From the first tweet above, 1 m3 = 10.88 kWh of energy. So, the effective cost if this was electricity is $0.5845/10.88 = $0.0537/kWh. Using the same procedure my effective electricity rate is $0.1740/kWh. Electricity costs me 3.24x more than gas!

6/ With electricity 3.24x natural gas energy, it's approximately the same heating cost to run a heat pump instead of a gas furnace due to efficiency differences. It's better than it used to be, but we're still paying a high premium for low carbon energy.

7/ Keep in mind historical commodity rates for natural gas (unadjusted for inflation) were considerably higher. In 2006 the commodity was $0.41/m3 before all the other charges. Today it's $0.32/m3. Source: oeb.ca/consumer-infor…

8/ The high gas rates of 2005-2006 got me into heat pumps. For a short time it was even cheaper to plug in an electric space heater than use natural gas. That type of price equivalence is the strongest driver towards using highly efficient heat pumps.