How to Choose Your Heating Source
Heating energies are diverse, some more common than others, and each with its advantages and disadvantages to consider. Let’s study them together to learn how to choose your energy optimally.
Wood
Wood is renewable energy. It belongs to the category of biomass heating, biomass being all organic matter of plant or animal origin. Biomass boilers burn various fuels such as logs, wood pellets, reconstituted logs, etc. Economic and ecological, wood energy is very efficient.
Electricity
With its lower investment cost and ease of installation, electric heating is widely used, although the high price per kWh makes its use relatively expensive. Electricity is also the energy that offers the widest choice of appliances on the market: storage or inertia heaters, radiant heaters, underfloor heating, luminous ceilings, etc.
Fossil fuels
Fossil energies are energies coming from the decomposition of organic matter over several million years. They are produced from coal, oil and natural gas. If their caloric power is essential, their reserve is non-renewable and is gradually depleted. They are globally polluting.
Fuel oil
Despite the fluctuation of fuel oil prices linked to the price of oil, a high investment cost, and the need to store it, fuel oil energy is still widely used because of the performance of its boilers and burners, which offer better combustion and increasingly low toxic emissions and excellent durability. Not to mention the absence of a single tariff that allows competition to work.
Propane
Propane, also known as LPG (liquid petroleum gas), is the cleanest of fossil fuels. Stored in aerial or underground tanks, propane is associated with condensation and low-temperature boilers with excellent efficiency.
Natural gas
Natural gas, also known as town gas, is less of a greenhouse gas emitter than oil and still benefits from significant resources on the planet. Natural gas energy is associated with condensation and low-temperature boilers that offer excellent efficiency and require no storage but a connection to the network.
Renewable energies
Renewable energies are energies whose implementation does not lead to the extinction of the initial resource and are renewable on a human scale. There are 5 types of renewable energy: solar, wind, aerothermal, geothermal and biomass.
Solar energy
Solar energy is the most used renewable energy today. It can be thermal or photovoltaic. Thermal collectors, black in colour, produce hot water, sanitary and coupled with heating. Photovoltaic collectors, recognizable by their bluish colour, are designed to produce electricity.
Wind energy
Still little used, wind energy captures part of the wind’s energy to convert it into electricity. There are two types of wind turbines for individuals. A propeller turns under the effect of air movement and transmits its motion to an axis driving the electrical generator.
The wind turbine with a horizontal axis works thanks to a propeller placed horizontally compared to the ground, either on a mast or on a roof of frontage. It can capture very weak winds.
The vertical axis wind turbine is less common. Composed of an axis topped by a wheel, it is not very powerful but resistant to strong winds.
Aerothermy
Aerothermy consists in transforming the calories contained in the outside air into heat (or coolness) using a heat pump which restores them by propelling air (it is an air/air heat pump) or by heating water (air/water heat pump). This type of heat pump can be installed on any land but is more sensitive to fluctuations in outside temperatures.
Geothermal energy
Geothermal energy consists in transforming the calories in the ground into heat (or coolness) through a heat pump that restores them by propelling air (it is a ground/ground heat pump) or by heating water (ground/water heat pump). It requires significant work to bury a collection network in the ground and must be maintained annually.
Dual-energy
Dual energy combines two energies, most often traditional energy (oil, gas, for example), with another energy source, generally renewable. It is possible to opt directly for a combined system (condensing gas boiler and solar energy, for example) or to connect your current heating system with a technology that uses renewable energy. The investment is important, but so are the savings.