Source to compare efficiencies of heating methods

We are oil here and many have either switched to heat pump with oil back up Or go the mini split units.

We have one mini split in an addition. Must say it keeps that room warm and cool. Considering there are two sets of sliding doors, as well as an automatic dog door (think drive thru pickup window). One would think the electric bill would really jump sky high in the winter, but it's not bad.

We are considering, with the fact that our oil burner is now 25 years old; to go with mini splits. Though we also have central air. Gas is not available to us, unless we get 10 other families on our street to agree to share the cost to bring it on our street. We don't want propane.

Minisplits are very popular for various reasons - it also seems common up here for many houses to have been built without ductwork (e.g. boilers), which makes central AC a very expensive renovation (if at all), and minisplits solve that issue PLUS allow for individual tailoring of room temps (unless your AC system is really fancy with a lot of zones, controllers and dampers, that's something any central system won't be capable of). Ultimately that should also increase the effective efficiency of a minisplit system (even if it's powered by relatively expensive electricity) because you can heat/cool JUST the areas that want it rather than, say, a whole level of a house. I'm sure it costs more from a capital perspective (I doubt people with blank sheets of paper are designing whole houses with minisplits).

I'm just looking for some objective data, that's all, and it seems difficult to find!

We didn't have duct work for central ac, but my husband installed it thru the eaves of the house. The same way any HVAC contractor would have done so. Tedious work and dirty work.

We still haven't decided on what to do. Every home we see with units installed outside, looks like a battleship with the way the piping is done. That is not attractive to us.

Odd to post this in Finance but it's really a finance question. There are many methods to heat and cool living spaces, and I'm trying to find a source that allows comparing them all in terms of ultimate cost - factoring in efficiencies and local prices of utilities (electricity, etc).

Basically what I am looking at is - here in New England it's common to use home heating oil (which is really just diesel), NG (boiler or forced air), wood stoves and heat pumps for heating, and AC is generally regular AC (some people have geo but that's pretty rare). The combo "minisplit" units are popular, but I'm concerned that in the winter, if the unit defaults to pure electric heat (as in resistance/toaster) it will be outrageously expensive, vs. a true heat pump (which will only work down to a certain temperature), since our electricity is very expensive.

The source would be a spreadsheet you compile. You can find estimators of how much energy you'd need and what it would cost for various source (though I'm not sure about aggregated -- usually it's manufacturer by manufacturer). However, there are SO many factors, not the least of which is the fact that any particular fuel source is subject to price swings. Hell, electricity might be expensive to you today, but in five years, perhaps you'll be all solar and pay 0. And in 15 years -- well within the lifetime of the system -- maybe we'll all be powered by fusion for pretty much nothing anyway. Same thing goes for rebates and incentives -- they change all the time and YMMV if they're granted to you (because of the rebate fairy). There's really no incentive for anyone (outside the government) to provide such a comparable and everyone's situation will be hugely different.

However, there might be reasonable options. I can't remember -- are you in MA or CT? In MA, there's the HEAT loan [masssave.com]. You need to plan ahead to do it because it takes a little while, but essentially you can make a bunch of energy-efficiency upgrades (which are eligible for rebates through the same program family) and pay it back over 5-7 years with 0% interest.

We had an old oil boiler that was also the on-demand hot water heater. We switched to energy efficient NG boiler and an indirect water heater. Paid about 12k and are waiting on incentives. This will be our first winter with the setup, so we're waiting to see about the savings. However, where we were paying a couple grand a year in oil, we're now paying about $20 a month and we keep the place warmer than we used to. I'm sure that the bill will increase once the snow falls, of course. That said, the not having to worry about an oil tank leak in my basement or running out of fuel and not being able to get a refill for a few days is priceless. Of course, Columbia Gas did blow up half of Andover with their gas lines the other year...

What I'm looking for is not the prices, but rather an efficiency or energy usage of sorts that's all 1:1 comparison.

So assumptions would be, certain home size, certain outdoor and indoor temps with some assumption about R value of walls and such - how much kW would electric heat use, how many gallons of HHO would be used for a furnace, how much electricity would a heat pump use, etc etc.

In essence I'm not looking for exact numbers for my situation but some general comparison - like a heat pump takes x kW to maintain a certain space at some temperature whereas a HHO furnace would eat so many gallons of HHO. Then I find my current prices, plug in and see where everything lies. I did find an XLS once that was generated by some government site, but I can't find it any longer and I am certain it did not include heat pumps (my main concern).

You'll never find that. It would leave out heating sources like wood stoves and pellet stoves, which are popular options. Unless you want to start calculating the energy density of pellets and oil. Dollars would be the easiest comparison (besides the fluctuating costs of various fuels). Furthermore, your categorization is just so broad. Not only can you buy furnaces of various efficiencies (meaning that you get more energy per unit fuel), but that efficiency depends upon the furnace size matching the space. (Kinda like PSUs -- if you buy one that's too small or too big for your usual load, you won't get the maximum efficiency.) On top of that, you have issues like heating the whole house (ie with a furnace) vs only heating two rooms with electric baseboards. If you do 90% of your living in 20% of your house, it may be worth it to use a less-efficient method that's more precise.

So while I understand what you're going for, I don't know how precise anything will be. Have you poked around this site [energy.gov] at all?

I'm an engineer so yes I understand there are assumptions to be made, but I'm only looking for ballpark numbers. For example, I know 100% electric resistive heating, while 100% efficient is also ass-rapingly expensive - I'd be content with just some general info like, is a natural gas boiler around the same cost to operate as a heat pump (insert my own local energy prices of course)./

I live in Long Island and have oil heating. What's the process to bring NG line? cost involved and time frame? Do I have to petition 10 neighbors which I think is doable? Don't mean to high jack post.

this shows how to compare the cost per gallon/btu for the fuels then you need to figure in the efficiency of the burning process.

https://energykinetics.com/saving...mparisons/

Electricity is considered to be 100% efficient and allows for spot heating much like a mini split whcich could help if you can just shut the bedroom door and let the rest of tyhe house cool down then burn wood during the day..

https://energykinetics.com/saving...mparisons/