Since last year’s sharp rise and even sharper fall in electricity prices, many people have begun drawing a correlation between the price consumers in the United Kingdom pay for natural gas and that which they pay for electricity. It is doubtful that a single UK homeowner has not wondered at one time or another whether they would be better off relying solely on electricity for heat and hot water or on the combination of gas and electricity that is more commonly in place. We tend to assume that using gas for heating and hot water saves money consistently. But the recent downturn in electricity prices has made many people stop and consider the symbiotic relationship that exists between gas and electricity that results in overall energy prices.
Electricity producing plants produce power through many different means. The most efficient of these is hydroelectric power but there are simply not enough dams and rivers in the UK to provide the electricity needed. Many then would opt for nuclear power as a non-fossil fuel alternative. But until such time as cold fusion exists, nuclear fission remains a distinct safety liability. This essentially leaves us with coal fired and natural gas fired power plants as the major source of UK electricity. Coal fired power plants must be fitted with gobs of antipollution devices. Burns twice as cleanly as coal and therefore is the fossil fuel of choice. So, given that we primarily use natural gas to produce our electricity the two are tied together in a pricing parallel. If we as consumers use more gas then the demand creates higher prices that in turn raised the cost of the gas used to produce our electricity, which results in higher end user electricity prices. If we use more electricity, more gas is used to produce that same power and once again higher demand results in higher prices for natural gas to fire the power plants and we are then faced with higher electric bills and probably higher prices for our natural gas.
Tags: electricity prices, natural gas, natural gas and electricity prices