Re: British (european?) kitchen counter electric outlets

On 6/10/24 7:34 AM, john larkin wrote:

On Mon, 10 Jun 2024 08:00:18 +0100, Jeff Layman <Jeff@invalid.invalid>

<....>

How long is a piece of string? It will depend on personal preferences,
weather conditions, how efficient the heating system is (including
losses), etc. We have a "price cap" in the UK which - sort of - controls
the prices of gas and electricity. From
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58090533>: "From 1 July until 30
September, gas prices will be capped at 5.48p per kilowatt hour (kWh),
and electricity at 22.36p per kWh". It would be possible to find (much)
lower prices than those, depending on the tariff used from the company
who supplies the power.
>
I'm not sure if you can see that BBC page in the USA, but if so there's
a lot more information there.

 I wonder how gas can be rated in KWh. That must asssume some sort of
gas-to-electricity converter machine.

The US uses the antiquated British Thermal Units (BTU) for gas billing.
A single BTU is equivalent to 1054J or about 0.293 Wh.
They are normally billed in groups of 100,000 BTUs called a Therm equivalent to 29.3kWh.
Current rates for gas in the SF Bay area are about $2/Therm.
This is equivalent to ~7c/kWh, electricity is 40-60c/kWh depending upon time of day etc.
Even accounting for 10-30% loss in gas appliances gas is cheaper than using a heat pump with a COP of ~3-4 for space and water heating.
kw

The easy way would be to compare direct gas heating with resistive
electric heating, both of which are crazy inefficient.
 There is a movement here to eliminate gas to Save The Earth. Berkeley
CA forbids running gas to new-construction homes. I'm sure that will
keep Climate Change from affecting Berkeley.