Natural Gas vs. Electric appliances

Gas is almost always cheaper than electricity.  Your situation might be different depending upon local and current prices, though.  To do an accurate comparison, you'll need to check your bills to find the rates for electric and gas that you're paying to your particular providers.  There's no way around this; you can't get meaningful results if you skip that step.

Also, if you don't already have gas service, then signing up for it means that you'll pay ~$12/mo. or so to the gas company for the privilege of being their customer.  You're also looking at the cost of having the gas lines run if your home doesn't already have them.  These things can quickly erase the savings of gas appliances over electric in many to most situations.

While gas is generally cheaper, it does have a couple of downsides.  With gas your house is more likely to explode.  And the byproducts of gas combustion from ovens and heating are unhealthy to breathe, and can actually kill pet birds.  For these reasons, I use electric instead of gas in my own home.  Of course, my energy use is so small that the extra cost of electricity is minimal for me.  Likewise, I hope to help my readers reduce their energy consumption so that the difference between electric and gas costs for them is insignificant.

Electric vs. gas ovens/stoves

See the calculator above.  More info is available in full report on energy used by cooking.

 

Electric vs. gas clothes dryers

See the calculator at right.  More info is available in my full report on energy used by clothes dryers.

Electric vs. gas heat

I don't have comparison tables for electric vs. gas heat specifically yet, but I do have quite a bit of info about saving energy on heating.

Cost of Natural Gas

Natural gas prices are all over the map, literaly.  First of all, prices vary greatly by region.  The price in Florida is double the price in California.  Prices have also jumped wildly in short periods of time.  The average U.S. price doubled from 2005 to 2008, and then fell by half from 2008 to 2011.  (The chart at right shows prices for the last few decades.)  Still, even when gas prices are at their highest, it's generally cheaper to run appliances on natural gas instead of electricity.

The national average price of residential gas was $1.29/Ccf in 2014. (source)  (Ccf and therms are roughly the same, more on this later.)  But average prices are useless for calculating your own costs and savings potential since costs vary widely by area and because they can change quickly.  That goes for state-by-state averages too, because the price from your own provider likely differs at least somewhat from the state average. (prices by state)

On this site I have to use something for calculations and defaults, so I often use $1.30/therm or Ccf, which is close to the 2014 average.