What we have electrified so far (and what needs to be)

❗ To-do	↯ Infra	We haven’t upgraded our main service from 125A. We are likely to need to before switching our furnaces to heat pumps.
✅	😎 Solar & Battery	Producing and storing our own electricity makes using electric appliances (and vehicles) even cheaper, helps the environment and the grid, and gives us resilience against outages.
✅	🚗 Car
✅	💧 Water Heater	We replaced our gas water heater with a plug-in heat pump-only water heater.
✅	🧑‍🍳 Range (Stove & Oven)	We replaced our gas range with an electric range with an induction stove.
❗ To-do	Furnaces	We have two gas, forced-air furnaces for heating the home.
❗ To-do	Clothes Dryer	Our clothes dryer uses gas for heating.

😎 Solar & Battery

What: We installed Tesla Solarglass tiles on our roof and two Tesla Powerwalls.

Why: Producing and storing our own electricity makes using electric appliances (and vehicles) even cheaper, helps the environment and the grid, and gives us resilience against outages.

More Details: I have a handful of other posts about our solar and battery system, including:

• Home Electricity Fundamentals where I establish a fundamental understanding of residential electrical energy that will help understand how the components of a solar and battery system work and interact
• Understanding my Tesla Energy System in which I share my understanding of the components of my system, what they do, and how they work together.
• A look at the production and finances of my Tesla Energy.

🚗 Car

What: We have a Tesla Model Y.

What’s good: For us, an EV is better than a gas car in almost every way:

• Convenience: We’re fortunate enough to be able to charge at home. With a gas car, we’d have to visit a gas station every couple weeks, but with an EV we do almost all charging at home and only have to stop at a charging station a couple times a year when we’re on a road trip.
• Cost & Maintenance:
  • Mileage (cost-per-mile): As you can see in A look at the production and finances of my Tesla Energy, our cost per 500 miles is about $2.90, while a gas car that gets 50 MPG (optimistic) at $3/gal (also optimistic) costs $30.00 per 500 miles; more than 10× the cost.
  • Maintenance: Overall less work and cost to maintain; e.g., no oil to change or radiator to maintain or repair. On the other hand, tires wear more quickly and are more expensive.
• Environment & Efficiency:
  • Because we mostly charge at home from solar, and our utility offers 100% renewable energy, using our car does not directly emit greenhouse gasses.
    • On the other hand, any energy clean we use (whether self-generated or grid-supplied) is less energy available to other customers on the grid whose usage might need to be supplied by fossil-fuel sources.
  • EVs are more efficient.
    • More of the energy is turned motion (and waste heat).
    • Much of the deceleration energy is recovered.
• Performance: Our EV has quicker acceleration that any widely available, comparably-priced gas car.

💧 Water Heater

What: We replaced our gas water heater with a plug-in heat pump-only water heater.

What’s good: The model we chose could be plugged into a regular 120V outlet; a shared circuit, even (i.e., into a outlet that also has other appliances plugged into other outlets on the same circuit). That eliminated electrical work for us (e.g., adding a new dedicated 240V circuit/outlet).

By scheduling most of the work of heating water for during the day, that work is powered by our solar during the summer and avoids usage during peak times (when dirty energy is most likely).

More Details: A couple other posts about this:

• Our Heat Pump Water Heater – Part I: Choosing a Water Heater
• Our Heat Pump Water Heater – Part II: Our Experience with It

🧑‍🍳 Range (Stove & Oven)

What: We replaced our gas range with an electric range with an induction stove.

What’s good — especially compared to natural gas:

• Environment: Can’t leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas (and currently the second largest greenhouse gas contributor to global climate change after carbon dioxide).
• Safety & Health:
  • Unlike natural gas, can’t leak methane into the home, which may lead to respiratory diseases.
  • Unlike natural gas, doesn’t emit carbon monoxide during use (a byproduct of burning methane) which can cause carbon monoxide poisoning and death.
  • Unlike natural gas, can’t itself burn unintentionally (e.g., unexpected fire when there’s a problem lighting) or even explode.
    • And when we’re all off of natural gas and get rid of its infrastructure, we eliminate the risk of explosions such as the San Bruno pipeline explosion.
  • The induction range itself doesn’t get very hot and can be safely touched almost immediately after removing pots/pans. With gas ranges, the iron grates get very hot and stay very hot for a long time.

• Speed: Cookware heats up more quickly. I think our kettle reaches boiling in about a quarter of the time it took on gas (I never timed it on the gas stove).
• Efficiency: Induction stoves are about 85% efficient meaning that 85% of the electrical energy used is turned into heat in the pot/pan. Meanwhile gas is only about 32% efficient (EnergyStar.gov, New York Times); much of the heat is lost to heating up the air around the cookware, and the iron grates holding up the cookware.

My Electrification Posts