July 7, 2008—To help consumers objectively compare fuel costs, BuildingGreen has just launched a sophisticated, yet very simple, online fuel-cost- comparison calculator, the company announced.
The challenge in comparing fuel costs is the fact that most fuels are purchased by volume or weight, rather than energy content. It is difficult to compare gallons of fuel oil with hundreds of cubic-feet (ccf) of natural gas and kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity.
Adding to the complexity, there are big differences in how efficiently energy sources are converted into heat and how efficiently that heat is distributed throughout a building, notes BuildingGreen.
To accurately compare the costs of different energy sources, we need to look at the price per delivered unit of heat. If we compare fuel costs on the basis of dollars per million British thermal units (Btus) of delivered heat, we are comparing apples to apples.
The new fuel-cost comparison tool is free on BuildingGreen.com along with a primer on comparing fuel costs.
