We use gas for water and cooking. There aren't natural gas lines on our street; we get it delivered monthly but the prices are pretty ridiculous.
Any suggestions for cutting costs?
Natural Gas Delivery Too Expensive
adog on 23/03/2023 - 15:38
Last edited 23/03/2023 - 15:39
Last edited 23/03/2023 - 15:39
Comments
If it's delivery then can't be natural gas.
Delivered by pipeline.
Get solar panels (if you haven't got them already) and convert everything to electric. I think there are a few government incentives & rebates going around, so it's worth exploring
Yeah nah
So, spend approx. $10,000 and have renos.
This way in 20 years time you can finally see those savings kicking in.Other than that, shop around for local suppliers other than Elgas, they normally have better offers.
I'd love to know which supplier you're going through that your gas bills are only $500 a year. Getting a supply charge under $400 a year is hard enough in itself.
It's called Kings Hot Gas
I only use it for cooking and although I cook a lot I spend less than $100 year.
Water is hot water solar. Northern NSW@Hasbulla: Hot water is where the real cost is for using gas. Sounds like the best decision would be what you've done, gas for cooking and solar hot water.
Personally I'm switching all electric myself, but in my case solar pays for itself in 3 years just replacing electricity, hot water will be next because of the cost of gas and cooking last but only because of that pesky supply change (maybe I should look at bottled too).
If you are paying anywhere remotely close to $10K to switch to an induction cooktop and heatpump hot water, you aren't doing much shopping around and investigating your options. Solar deals pop up here often enough in the $3K-$6k range.
Even if you don't have solar it's likey worth your while to invest in induction & heat pump.
We swapped both in the last two years, from memory (as I don't have the receipts handy) the heat pump (hydrotherm — which is smart so it talks to Tuya so I can turn it off on holidays and back on before we get home) came to about $1400 after the STC credits, got an aldi induction cooktop (a proper one not a portable one) for ~$200-$300. I think the plumber charged around $400 to install the heat pump and cap off the gas in the kitchen.Both plug into normal plugs (but the cooktop can be hard wired in it you want to run all 4 zones at full blast, you can also hard wire in the heat pump if you want it on an off-peak tariff)
So all up around $2100 to swap over. When the gas supply/connection charge is around $450/year, (not even factoring in the usage fees) it doesn't take long to break even!
Agree.
About 7 years ago we paid 12k for a solar panel system (5kW or so, can't remember) and a heat pump hot water tank (so that we could disconnect the gas supply). After a few years of very low power bills, the investment has paid for itself.
12k was a big amount for us back then as we just bought our first home. Looking back it was probably one of the best things we did.
My gas stove is connected to a LPG bottle. I have 2 outside, and I have to manually switch over to the backup when the gas runs out. Then I will need to go and refill the gas bottle. I spend about $20 for a 9kg bottle and I swap it out approximately once a month. I would imagine I would be in the minority, I only know one other household that is doing the same thing, which are my in-laws. :)
$20 for a 9kg bottle..
That's damn cheap in today's market.
Same here for my gas cooktop but oven is electric. 9kg bottle lasts probably 6 months cooktop alone. With your usage I assume your oven is also gas.
Induction cooker, heat pump and solar panels ;)
Will pay for itselfYou get propane/butane (LPG) delivered, not natural gas.
Ultimately the best way to cut costs will be to switch to electric cooking and heating. Government is pushing people to make the switch
https://www.energy.gov.au/rebates/renewable-power-incentives
If you don't already have solar panels then think about installing them. The system will pay for itself usually within a few years. My 5kW system yields around $1200/pa in energy savings and export. You can have one installed for about $4k.
"Government is pushing people to make the switch"
You might want to look into why that is. :)
Don't have hot water or cook food. Pretty simple when you think outside the box.
….you will own nothing and be happy!
….embrace The Great Reset, today!
Use a BBQ at the local park
just need a deal on a nice little cart to also hold all the condiments and utensils.
Idk where you are in NSW, but see if you can get onto supagas.
there is a promo where if you order 2 x 45kg tanks you can get 30% off for 1st delivery.i tried to switch from elgas but our local supagas is not taking new customers atm.
Any suggestions for cutting costs?
Change to elec cooking and hot water.
Dunno why u got negged as u made a reasonable comment. My folks recently changed from gas to electric for this reason.
Thanks! Not sure, this place can be strange at times.
But basically if you're on bottled gas, then there isn't much choice, the price is the price. So either change to a different method to cook/heat water or use them less I guess.
My folks are on bottled gas, they only use it for cooking, so about 1 bottle a year. They used to have it for heating, but it was a bottle a week and that was only using it in the evenings as they had been at work during the day.
Gas is way up in price because of the Ukraine war. That's what's driving power prices up too, because a lot of electricity is produced by burning gas.
The question is whether these gas prices will remain after that war ends, or return to the old normal. If the latter is the case you will have spent a lot of money getting off gas, only to find the pain would have only been temporary.
Certainly the Americans blowing up the pipeline from Russia to Europe will prevent gas prices returning to the old level, because Europe can't now just turn back on the gas supply from Russia. The pipeline has to be rebuilt. That was the point of blowing it up.
If gas use goes down, and new builds stop being gassed, then that's fewer gas users subsidising each other.
Nordstream still has 1/4 pipes functional. There is no issues with pipeline capacity from Russia even after the sabotage. Nordstream isn't the only pipeline to Europe. Also this pipeline was also opened just after, so even if the war ends it is unlikely any more pipelines for Russia will be needed.
Even before the war gas was expensive (atleast in Canberra). Even with an expensive heat pump hot water system the return on investment isn't that long.
I would imagine getting natural gas delivered would be expensive. Perhaps enquire about LPG?
You are going to have to cut down usage to cut costs. You may need to invest a sum if you want to continue with the same amount of cooking and hot water but use another source of energy (sparks)
I thought gas in general stopped being cheap. My house, my landlord's house anyway, has instant gas hot water which is great. Except when the power goes out it stops working so if electric instant hot water is cheaper to run, and if electric induction stoves are better than gas, then it seems like you shouldn't want gas anyway.
It's the supply charges that add up. You have x2 supply charge - gas and electricity. You can't forgoe electicity supply so try and cull your gas supply either by replacing with all electric appliances or as mentioned above cut down your gas usage to the point where you can supply it yourself in 9kg bottles.
There's likely to be something in this year's budget to help transition households from gas to electricity. Might be worth waiting?
An induction stove is much better that a gas stove especially with the apparent health consequences of having gas cookers in your house. An air conditioner is also more efficient for heating.
Just electricity everything.
Natural gas or LPG?