Mixed Heating Appliances

[Carlos Espinoza]

If a home uses a air source heat pump for central heating but natural gas for everything else, can utility calibration still occur?

If a home uses multiple fuels, e.g. propane and wood pellets,  what approach should be taken?

[Gamaliel Lodge]

EDIT: OptiMiser now offers direct support for multiple fuel types.  On the Utilities tab, select “Multiple Fuels” in the Fuel Type control and then open the Multiple Fuel Entry popup. You can choose Start and End dates (preferably spanning at least one year) and then enter total usage for each fuel.  The instructions below are still useful, if you feel that you can accurately describe multiple periods of combined usage.

At this point the utility analysis can handle electricity plus any one fuel.  Simply specify on the Utility tab, whether the home uses Fuel Heat, Electric Heat, or Dual Heat.  That will inform the utility analysis where to search for the heating signal.  In the situation you describe, the analysis would get the heating, cooling, and electric base load (i.e. appliances) information from the electric bills and the one fuel base load information from the fuel bills.

For multiple heating fuels. you can work around this limitation by converting usage for a second fuel to the same energy units as the primary fuel.  The tricky thing about doing this is that the delivery schedules will probably be different.  You will probably have to combine multiple bills to achieve a period with known total usage.  You may even need to combine all of them into one period covering the entire heating season.  It would be helpful to read the section on “delivered” fuels in the Utilities help.  Here are the Btu equivalents for a selection of heating fuels:

Natural Gas (MCF) – 1,025,000
Natural Gas (Therm) – 100,000
Natural Gas (MBtu) – 1,000,000
Electricity (kWh) – 3,412
Propane (CF) – 2,539
Propane (Gallon) – 91,330
Fuel Oil (Gallon) – 140,000
Wood (Cord) – 20,000,000
Wood (Pound) – 8,000
Pellets (Ton) – 16,500,000
Pellets (Pound) – 8,250
Kerosene (Gallon) – 135,000
Coal (Ton) – 28,000,000

 

 

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