Overview

✅ Jan 2026	↯ Infra	We upgraded our main service from 125A to 200A. However, we had been on 125A for about three months after fully electrifying — through an unusually cold winter where our heat pump had to work its hardest — without any issues. I use Emporia Vue energy monitors to better understand and control how we use energy.
✅ 2020	😎 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.
✅ 2018	🚗 Cars	We have a Tesla Model Y and a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle.
✅ 2024	💧 Water Heater	We replaced our gas water heater with a plug-in heat pump-only water heater.
✅ 2024	🧑‍🍳 Range (Stove & Oven)	We replaced our gas range with an electric range with an induction stove.
✅ 2025	🔥❄ HVAC	We replaced two gas, forced-air furnaces with a two-zone heat pump system.
✅ 2025	👕 Clothes Dryer	We replaced our gas clothes dryer with a hybrid heat pump dryer.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Electrification

Electric appliances are mostly superior than than the fossil-fuel versions. However, there are some drawbacks, and I think it’s important we are open and clear about them.

Of course, I believe that the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks for most people most of the time.

Possible drawbacks for all electric appliances

• May require electrical work, including main service & panel upgrade, and new circuits to the appliances.
  • Counter-points / mitigations:
    • There are incentives available to offset these costs.
    • You’ll get to remove gas infrastructure, including the regulator and meter.
• Often are more expensive up front (i.e., an “investment).
  • Counter-points / mitigations: They are an investment — most of these are upgrades that will pay for themselves over the long term.
• They may stop working when there’s no electricity.
  • Counter-points / mitigations: Batteries or generators can be used when the power is out. Some stoves even have their own battery which not only allows them to work in an outage, but also allows them to be plugged into regular 120V outlets (eliminating the possible need to run a new 240V circuit to the stove).

Meanwhile, all electric appliances have these benefits over their gas counterparts

• They’re safer for you and your family: They are less likely to burn unintentionally (e.g., unexpected fire when there’s a problem lighting) or can’t explode.
  • It will eventually also be safer for your community: When we’re all off of natural gas and get rid of its infrastructure, we eliminate the risk of catastrophic events such as the San Bruno pipeline explosion.
• They’re better for your health: They can’t leak methane into the home, which may lead to respiratory diseases, and they won’t emit carbon monoxide (a byproduct of burning methane) into the home, which can cause carbon monoxide poisoning or even death.
• They’re usually less expensive to operate. On the other hand, electricity prices can have higher variability (e.g., market rate electricity plans, or more expensive EV charging stations).
• They’re better for the environment since they don’t emit or leak greenhouse gasses.
• They’re better for energy security: We aren’t as dependent on a limited resource that we largely rely on imports for.
• You may be able to remove venting. For us, our furnace vented into an old, otherwise unused chimney. After replacing our gas furnace we were able to remove the duct to the chimney, which people hit their head on many times, and the chimney itself.

Details

😎 Solar & Battery

What: We installed Tesla Solarglass tiles on our roof (2020) and two Tesla Powerwalls (first: 2020, second: 2024).

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 System.

💧 Water Heater

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

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 avoided needing to do electrical work for us (e.g., adding a new dedicated 240V circuit/outlet).

Drawbacks

• Slower to heat up water: they have a lower “Recovery Rate,” which means it takes them longer to heat up the water in the tank.
  • Counter-points / mitigations:
    • Recovery rate might not be an issue. That is, the tank capacity might be sufficient, and taking longer to heat up the water in the tank for the next uses might not matter.
    • Hybrid water heaters, which have a recovery rate between gas water heaters and heat pump-only water heaters, is an option that balances recovery rate with efficiency. Smarter ones allow you set it so that you use only the heat pump if that ends up being sufficient.
    • Getting a slightly larger capacity tank can reduce the need for a higher recovery rate.
• They can be a bit noisy: The heat pump (a compressor and a fan) can be loud enough to not be a good option for some installations (e.g., if they’re next to a living area).
• They require condensate drainage: Heat pumps produce condensate — like water dripping off of an air conditioner — that needs to be handled. This could entail a pump and a tube to outside if there isn’t a drain nearby.
  • Counter-points / mitigations:
    • This also means the water heater is dehumidifying the air around it, which could be a benefit.
    • Gas water heaters need a vent to outside, which is often more obtrusive and difficult than handling condensate.

More Details

• 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.

Drawbacks

• May be a bit of noisier than gas stoves: Some have a fan to keep the internals from over-heating. They aren’t usually loud, but they’re not silent, either. However, stove usage is often accompanied by range hood fans, which are usually louder than the stove’s fan.
  • Some portable induction stoves make a high-pitched sound when they’re on. Fortunately, this isn’t as common as it used to be, especially for non-portable units.

Benefits that make electric stoves still likely a better choice

• Safer & Healthier: 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.

• Faster: 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).
• More Precise and Consistent; Easier to Cook Well: It’s harder to get the flame of the gas stove exactly where you want it, and even the gas itself can vary (with temperature, pressure, and formulation). Meanwhile, it’s easy to set an induction stove to ‘6’, for example, and it will always perform the same.
  • Some induction stoves have the ability to maintain temperature (Impulse, for example), making it easy to cook things at a particular exact temperature; great for melting chocolate or sous vide (even without temperature-based controls, I can easily sous-vide on our induction stove)!
• More Efficient: 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.
• Sleeker and easier to clean: Without flame spreaders and grills:
  • Inductions stoves have fewer tights spaces — or even none at all — that are hard to clean.
  • Can have a minimalist aesthetic that fits better into many kitchens.

🔥❄ HVAC

What: We replaced our gas-powered ducted, forced-air HVAC heating systems with a heat pump system.

We had two separate systems that used gas to heat our home, one for each floor (because it’s a 115+ year-old home that’s difficult to retrofit a single system into). We replaced them with a Mitsubishi heat pump system that still uses two air handlers (and existing vents/returns/ducts), but they share one outdoor unit.

Drawbacks

• Needs more space outside for the outdoor heat exchanger if you don’t already have or weren’t going to add air conditioning.
  • Counter-points / mitigations:
    • If you already have air conditioning, or wanted it anyway, then you’ll have an outdoor unit anyway.
    • Heat pumps don’t require venting (like gas furnaces do).
• Heating makes more noise outside. Heat pumps run a compressor and fan outside while heating (just like air conditioning while cooling). Gas furnaces, on the other hand, are generally inaudible from outside — the only sound you might hear is the venting.
  • Counter-points / mitigations: The inside unit makes less noise than a gas furnace.
• May have difficulty operating in extreme cold.
  • Counter-points / mitigations: Can get heat strips (or even gas) that can be used during extreme cold spells.

Benefits that make heat-pump HVAC systems still likely a better choice

• Air conditioning: We now have cooling everywhere, also, because the heat pump can both heat and cool.
• More comfortable and quieter: Heat pumps can generally run at lower/slower intensity (for longer), 10-30% of their capacity (whereas gas can’t run below about 40%), which means:
  • More comfortable, constant temperature: It maintains the temperature better by mildly heating (or cooling) most of the time rather than repeatedly heating intensely for short periods followed by longer periods of letting the temperature cool.
  • Quieter: We don’t hear the air coming out the vents nearly as much as before.
• Heat pumps also do cooling (“air condition”), so you get that in addition to heating even if you weren’t planning on having that.
• Heat pumps don’t require exhaust venting.

👕 Clothes Dryer

What: We replaced our gas clothes dryer with a hybrid heat-pump dryer.

A hybrid heat-pump dryer uses both resistive heating (gets hotter faster, but is only about 100% efficient at converting electricity into heat) and a heat pump (slower, but can be up to about 300% efficient at putting heat into the dryer), resulting in drying times that are closer to gas dryers (than heat pump-only dryers) but still efficient (and of course, don’t emit/leak unhealthy and greenhouse gasses like gas dryers).

Drawbacks

• Takes longer: Heat pump dryers take longer to dry clothes than gas and resistive electric dryers.
  • Counter-points / mitigations: Hybrid heat pump dryers are a good compromise that have drying times close to gas and resistive electric dryers, with all the benefits of non-gas appliance (health, safety, etc) and double the efficiency of resistive-only electric dryers.
• They add heat and humidity to the room: Heat pump dryers are ventless. Rather than expelling the moisture out of the vent (along with hot air, which is a big reason why vented dryers are inefficient), it is condensed into water into a tank or pumped into a drain. Without the vent, some of the moisture and heat leaks into the room that it’s in.
  • Counter-points / mitigations:
    • This could be considered a benefit in some situations (during cold, dry winters).
    • We put ours in the same space as our heat pump water heater, which puts out cold, dehumidified air, so they cancel each other out somewhat.

Other notes

• If drying time is important to you, consider hybrid heat pump dryers.
• There are 120V options if installing a 240V outlet is challenging for whatever reason.

Benefits of heat pump clothes dryers

• They don’t require venting (we were able to remove a lot of infrastructure dedicated to venting of gas appliances and reclaimed some very usable space and headroom).
• They remove a significant source of home fires: dirty dryer vents. The National Fire Protection Association estimates that nearly 4,000 fires a year were caused by dust, fiber, or lint in clothes dryers.
• They don’t leave a mess outside of the vent. Many vents leave lint build-up just outside of the home.

🚗 Cars

What: We have a Tesla Model Y (2022) and a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle (2025).

Drawbacks

• Range (anxiety): The typical range of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), 240-320 miles, might be insufficient sometimes.
  • Counter-points / mitigations:
    • A 250+mi range is more than enough for most people most of the time.
      • A research study for the Bureau of Transportation Statistics found that about 80% of trips are under 10 miles, and 52% were less than three miles (just 2% of all trips were greater than 50 miles)
    • For those who can charge at home or at work, the range only matters for long trips (occasional for most people).
• Charging: Those who don’t have the privilege of being able to charge at home or at work, have to visit charging stations more often, have to spend more time there, may not have as many convenient locations, and often don’t have as many amenities available to them.
• Towing Range: BEVs have a much lower range while towing, which can make it untenable for some scenarios; enough to rightly disqualify BEVs as an option for those few who will actually do long-range towing (certainly not most people).
• Cost: BEVs are substantially more expensive, and it would be unreasonable to fault many people for not choosing to spend more for the benefits of BEVs (especially in our current economy).

Benefits of Electric Vehicles

• Charging Convenience, for those who can charge at home or work: 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:
  • Clean Energy: Because we mostly charge at home from solar, and our utility offers 100% renewable energy, using our car does not directly result in greenhouse gas emissions (however, any clean energy we use, whether self-generated or grid-supplied, is less clean energy available to other customers on the grid whose usage might need to be supplied by fossil-fuel sources).
  • Efficiency: More of the energy is turned motion (and waste heat), less energy is wasted idling, and some of the deceleration energy is recovered.
• Performance: Our Model Y has quicker acceleration that any widely available, comparably-priced gas car.

Extended Range Electric Vehicles (EREV)

It’s fair that some people aren’t able or willing to accept the compromises of BEVs (and can’t yet take advantage of all of their benefits). In the meantime, EREVs offers a middle ground / transition option.

All of My Electrification Posts