does a wood pellet stove produce more energy per pound of fuel than a conventional wood stove burning hardwood?

Where I used to live I had a pellet stove in the dining room and a woodburning insert in the fireplace in the living room. Each has its strengths and each has its weaknesses.

The amount of heat you get from a pellet stove will depend as much on the type of pellets you burn as anything else. Pellet quality differs alot and you should always buy "premium, low-ash" pellets. They will cost a little more, but you will get more heat from them. There is a BTU rating printed on bags of pellets so you can compare heat output. I lived in the High Sierra Nevadas at the time and I bought Golden Flame and then Bear Mountain brand pellets. My pellet stove was an old Earth Stove RP45 (I bought it in 1993). It was definitely low-tech compared to the stoves that are available now, it did have a blower assembly and a battery backup. I never had any problems with it and I liked it because I could load up the hopper and have heat for well over 24 hours with the stove set on low. The heat from a pellet stove is less intense than the heat from a wood burner, but it's longer lasting and more consistent. If you live in an area where there are power outages, you will need a battery backup or a generator -- the pellet stove will not work without electricity.

I stopped burning regular cord wood in the fireplace insert and started burning densified fuel logs (I bought mine from Bear Mountain Forest Products and they were like Presto logs on steroids). They look like huge pellets -- about 18 inches long and they weigh between 5 and 7.5 pounds each (you definitely don't want to drop one of them on your foot). The heat output from them was amazing and, if you have an airtight stove or insert, the logs will burn for eight hours or more depending on how you calibrate your stove. The instructions that come with the logs warn you not to put more than two of them in a stove at a time because they will generate so much heat they can crack the stove or the glass in the stove. There was less ash to clean out of the stove and the logs were cleaner than cord wood. The woodburner was nice when we had extended power outages (sometimes 3 days or more) and for times when it was especially cold (20 below zero was not uncommon).

Our winter heating season started in late September and ended in May. I used about two tons of pellets (100 40-lb bags) and a "unit" of the fuel logs (a unit is 270 logs shipped shrink-wrapped on a pallet). The last year I was there, I spent about $450.00 on pellets and fuel logs for the entire winter. It was definitely less expensive than electric heat or heat from propane (the only other alternatives available there).