Thanks, Jim. I would consider electric to be nearly 100% effecient. If not, I would accept above 99%. I don't care about the losses associated with that because they are before my meter.
I still find it surprising because my NG price is very low, and it is still a big difference.
Thanks,
Jason
The average fossil-fired generator is ~30% efficient when looking at generator-fuel-BTUs-in vs. kwh dissipated at the end load, it should be no real shocker, eh? (Over half of the input BTUs at the plant go up the flues & cooling stacks, well before the primary winding of the first transformer. The very best noo-improoved combined cycle generator technology is about 60% efficient to the first transformer, and loses another 3-7% in grid losses.)
(For heating purposes electricity can be considered 99.9%+ efficient between your meter and the elements- losses in the house wiring is heat delivered inside conditioned space.)
The only way electricity can usually compete with NG is with heat pumps delivering a COP of 3.0. But both NG and electricity prices vary widely with region/supplier. Already-paid-for hydro & nukes are a lot cheaper than any form of new generating capacity, and fossil plants all suffer volatile fuel pricing issues.
NG is down this year and may stay down for awhile, as N. American proven reserves has expanded greatly with new technology, with a lot of coal seam & shale goods coming on line. Carbon taxes will favor NG over coal 2:1, so it may become the fuel of choice for any new fossil plants going forward- the prices will eventually rebound, but it may take awhile.
The most efficient use of NG for power generation is in combined heat/power cogeneration. There is at least one vendor of a household scale gas cogen using Honda technology at it's core. They combine it as a packaged unit with either a condensing furnace or condensing boiler to handle the full thermal load. It's price competitive with condensing boilers alone, but is a bit of a cost-adder for hot-air furnace configurations (but still has a very good internal return rate where net-metering is allowed.) See:
http://www.freewatt.com/
The guy in the office next to me has the Freewatt cogen in his house. Since he lives in $0.22/kwh country the payback is pretty fast for him!
In Germany they've taken the home-scale cogenerator up an order of magnitude with VW- powered generators supporting the entire thermal load of the house unassisted, wiping out the electric bill entirely while turning it into a net power supplier to the grid. The cogen is controlled remotely by the utility, the building owner pays the fuel, the utility pays the maintenance. It's price competitive with high efficiency heating systems, but with a much bigger payback for the homeowner (
no power bill? Kewl!) See:
http://www.lichtblick.de/h/ZuhauseKraftwerk_310.php
http://www.lichtblick.de/h/technik_291.php
With either of these systems you end up with 95%+ net fuel-BTU efficiency, since the heat is used by the building instead of sent up the flue, and the grid losses are near-zero (most of the power is consumed 1-transformer or fewer from the source.) You
could get that much efficiency out of just a high efficiency heating system, but without the premium quality benefit: The electrical power. With juice included the economics start looking pretty good. (I'd be doing it, except for the fact that the boiler supplied with the Freewatt is by itself 3-4x oversized for my heat load. I'm on their list, should they ever bundle it with something tiny enough. I expect they'll have competition soon enough...)