Heidelberg. Households with an efficient heat pump have around 31 percent lower heating costs than households with natural gas heating. On the other hand, if the heat pump is not working very efficiently, natural gas and heat pump electricity are on par. This is shown by an analysis by Verivox.
Current gas tariffs are well below 12 cents per kilowatt hour
New customers who heat a single-family house with an annual consumption of 20,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of natural gas currently pay around 2,100 euros – this corresponds to a kilowatt hour price of around 10.5 cents/kWh.
Heat pump electricity is significantly cheaper with an efficient heating system
Households with an efficiently working heat pump (SPF 4) need a total of 5,000 kWh of heat pump electricity to provide 20,000 kWh of heat. With a supply at the nationwide average price for new customers (as of mid-April 2023), the costs would be 1,451 euros. The average annual basic price is 114 euros, the average energy price is 26.78 cents/kWh. In this case, the total costs for the heat pump are around 31 percent lower than the gas costs for new customers.
“The average working price of the cheapest available offers for heat pumps, at just under 27 cents per kilowatt hour, is already below the planned price brake cap of 28 cents per kilowatt hour,” says Thorsten Storck, energy expert at Verivox.
Concrete costs depend heavily on the local situation
If the heat pump works less (annual performance factor 2.7), the heating costs are roughly the same as those of gas heating. At the current nationwide price for new customers, the total costs for the 7,500 kWh of electricity then required add up to 2,120 euros. Reasons for a less efficiently working heat pump system can be, for example, insufficient insulation or less suitable radiators.
“A gas boiler is much cheaper to buy than a heat pump. However, the price ranges for the different heating systems are large,” says Thorsten Storck.
“However, the specific costs and the necessary conversion work depend heavily on the individual situation and the structural conditions. All interested parties should clarify which type of heat pump is possible and how efficient the future heating system can be with the help of qualified energy advice on site.”
methodology
In order to smooth out the strong price increases of the past, the average new customer prices for gas and heat pump electricity were taken into account for the current calculations, which are currently significantly cheaper than the prices of many existing customers. It can be assumed that the current new customer prices reflect the medium-term market price level better than the currently still expensive prices for existing customer tariffs.
The JAZ (annual performance factor) expresses the efficiency of the heating system. A JAZ of 4 means that the heating system produces 4 kWh of heat from 1 kWh of electrical energy. Optimally adjusted heating systems should achieve an AC between 3 and 5.