Therms to kWh Converter – Instant Gas Energy Conversion

When you know the secret number, that turns terms in kilowatt-hours, the task becomes pretty simple. One term matches to around 29.307107 kilowatt-hours. This is the only conversion factor that you need, everything else comes from it.

What exactly is a term? It forms a unit for heat energy, that describes roughly 100 000 British thermal units or almost 105 megajoules, if that pleases you. One could also imagine it as 25 200 kilocalories.

How to convert gas terms to kilowatt-hours

It shows the energy in almost 100 cubic feet of natural gas, and here it comes up in the usage of many folks. In joules it reaches a bit more than 105 480 400. On the other hand kilowatt-hour simply points to the energy, that one-kilowatt power uses during one hour period.

The calculation for turning terms in kWh shows itself very easy, just multiply your terms by 29.3071. Assume 5 terms. That results in around 146.54 kWh.

Raise it to 15 terms, and you find almost 439.61 kWh. When the conversion factor entered your haed, the rest becomes easy cake.

Reverse the process works just as well. One kilowatt-hour matches to around 0.0341 terms. So 15 kWh match to almost 0.512 terms.

Why is this useful in everyday life? Because most companies measure gas usage in terms and electrical in kWh, what makes direct comparisons hard. Being able to skip between both helps you guess, which fuel truly costs less for heating.

Assume, that natural gas costs 0.84 dollars each term, while electricity stands at around 0.08 dollars each kWh, suddenly it is possible to do a fare apple-to-apple comparison.

Here is a practical sample: a person, that uses 229 terms during a year, can multiply that by 29.3 to reach around 6 709 kWh. Such a figure helps much more easily combine the whole energy usage from various fuel types. Another way is to convert all gas use in kWh by multiplying by around 29, later add it to your electricity.

That puts everything in kWh units for the month.

But here lies a catch. Converting 126 terms gives around 3 700 kWh of raw heat energy, but it assumes ideal efficiency, which never happens. Most gas boilers reach only around 80 percent efficiency.

When some use 500 terms yearly with that level, the truly available heat indeed delivers 40 000 000 BTU. One kWh from electric heating makes 3 412 BTU. Heat pumps totally change the situation (with an HSPF rating of 10), just around 2 483 kWh is enough to match 248 terms of space heating.

Some folks switch to electric space heaters instead of depending on a gas boiler, after they ran those numbers. The main lesson is, that the conversion factor of around 29 kWh each term stays thekey number, that you keep in your pocket.