In this episode, Cora Wyent walks us through Rewiring America’s “personal electrification planner,” a step-by-step how-to for homeowners (and renters!) looking to electrify their homes. Do you need up upgrade your panel? Install insulation first? Which appliance to prioritize? We get into all this & more.
We've completely electrified our older (1904) home in central WA State on a modest income with a family of 5. I have a few suggestions, some of which contrast with the ideas presented on the pod:
1. Don't skimp, if you have a 100 A panel, upgrade it. Get it done at the same time you do solar (see #2) and include it in the install cost (i.e. get 30% paid for by the feds)
2. Get solar first and, if you're swapping out gas for electric alternatives, size your system for double whatever you are currently using. I say do this first because having solar is the gateway drug for all the other upgrades. Once you have solar, you start paying attention to your production/consumption and it turns the whole thing into a game.
3. Skip the energy audit, I can tell you what they will say without even looking at your house. Add insulation in your attic, and if you have single-pane aluminum windows, get them replaced.
4. Running a 24 or 32-A EVSE (EV Charger) will not improve your efficiency, it will just slow down your charging speed. Can you live with 32A? Maybe, but if you have to put in a new 240V circuit anyway, just size it for a 60A breaker/48A EVSE.
5. Don't take sh!t from an HVAC contractor. If they say a heat pump won't work, tell them they just lost the job. Get a Mitsubishi, they are the best!
6. Cutting my gas pipe (after it was turned off) was more satisfying than I ever dreamed it would be. SO GOOD!
7. The final reason to electrify - other than climate and economic - is good ol' fashion SPITE! When the US went to hell in 2016 and we pulled out of Paris, I decided I'd spend as much as I had to to do my part. I guess I should thank Dump for being a malevolent A$$hole.
Actually the energy audit should include a blower door test which helps identify air leakage. Leakage can be a major source of heat loss especially in older homes like yours. Wall insulation can also be a major issue. If you have a basement or crawlspace insulating and sealing the walls and headers can also be helpful. Also if the audit is done correctly you should be able to determine your design heating and cooling loads. This should give you the approximate sizing of your heat pump. For your house and your situation it may be as simple as attic and aluminum windows being replaced but for many it can be quite a bit more involved.
Before I knew better, I had several audits done in previous homes, and none of them ever did a blower door test. Regardless, it'll be cheaper to slightly upsize everything on your HVAC (and solar) than it will be to do a deep energy retrofit on an older home.
I'm an Energy Advisor in Canada so I'm not sure how it works in the U.S. But an Energy Advisor here are required to do a blower door test on every house they audit and then do another when they go back for upgrade confirmation during the post retrofit audit. The cost isn't that much to do an audit here and until recently most of the audit cost was covered by the rebate programs. How much does an energy audit cost in Washington?
Peter, I did not mean to offend your profession. Pardon me if I was insensitive.
The energy auditors I've worked with did an initial assessment by looking at my windows, attic, crawl space, etc. They gave me the standard suggestions and the option of a more comprehensive audit that would include the blower door test but said it probably wasn't worth it in my 100+-year-old house unless I was planning to do a $40K retrofit of my exterior walls.
At the beginning of my electrification journey, I was all about energy efficiency and sealing and insulating and I even wanted to build to Passive House standards. And then the cost of solar was cut in half, and then half of that and half of that, etc., and doing all that other stuff no longer made any sense. I insulated my attic and crawl space, swapped out my windows, and put in a massive solar array. The house is comfy all year round, and the solar array powers everything including my cars.
Hi Mark, no worries. I think with all professions you can get different levels of work. It sounds like you did a great job with your home. I would strongly disagree with the energy auditor though, old houses can lose as much as 40% of their heat through air leakage. It's often the newer tighter houses that can be harder to improve. I usually do a walk around with the customer with the blower door on. In older houses, we will often be able to find a full page list of air leakage locations.
I think there is a big difference in licensing standards across the border. NRCan has a central licensing whereas in the US you are very likely to get a recommended energy audit from a contractor in the business of selling HVAC, insulation, or windows - or all of the above, while pushing the incentives favored by the referring utility. There is no follow-up post-project to evaluate differences, and no data collected in the home, just boilerplate recommendations aligned with their normal business. I'm sure one can find a 3rd party validator, but the utilities and contractors are closely aligned to harvest available incentives rather than optimize one's home or comfort.
Every window in my 40 year old home had failed seals, but since they were already double pane and there were no incentives available for replacing them it wasn't a top finding in the audit... except for the contractor associated with selling new windows.
And since Puget Sound Energy sells natural gas service of course there was an incentive on a natural gas furnace and water heater. It took 5 years to find a contractor willing to do a full electrification and I had to go to commercial services instead of residential providers. The utility still sends me discounts on new gas appliances and frets over my decreased gas consumption. The full-service electrification contractors identified as an emerging service opportunity are sorely needed, but this is also a place where the administrative state and proper licensing could have a big impact on citizen's home energy consumption outcomes.
A few years ago Dave interviewed a guy who ran a "one-stop-shop" for home efficiency and electrification. He called the EE regs and bureaucracy in the US, "Soviet style." There is a lot of "everything bagel liberalism," trying to solve poverty, discrimination etc., through efficiency policies while not annoying unions, etc. And as noted in this pod, it's one part of the IRA that is very limited in total outlays.
I have been mentioning them to some of my customers. I like the GE washer/heat pump dryer all in one combo. Very cool system. When my washer and dryer die that’s the next step.
PA is in the process of updating to the more energy efficient 2021 IECC. I'm learning it's not a very democratic process. I'd love if you'd do an episode about the craziness of building codes.
Building codes are such an issue. In NH we have very few incentives compared to MA, VT, and ME around us. On the flip side we have a lot of restrictive laws for clean energy installations. Home battery storage has to have a dry walled room with fire rates doors and a hardwired smoke detector. This adds several thousand dollars for those looking to install batteries. The other states have no such issues, and Green Mountain Power in VT has incentives to install batteries. They exchange battery storage for access to it during peak times, saving themselves and consumers millions of dollars, while reducing the need for expensive peaker plant energy.
Great conversation. I'd love to see whole-stack electrification consultants become a thing to help homeowners and renters maximize the efficiency of their homes.
The introduction of power efficiency of appliances is a topic that deserves more light, but exposes gaps in the US management of power and community assets.
In my home a modest battery in the panel, 25KWh, could cut by a third my peak energy draw from the grid per hour and double the energy delivered from the grid over the course of a year. This lightens the load on the grid, meaning my neighbors and I are less likely to crowd each other out in periods of high demand, and dramatically improves the grid's ability to get the power into the point of consumption.
The challenge lies in identifying who has an incentive to develop and deploy that appliance/asset/DER into the real world. To do it myself I'd have to violate more than a few codes and it isn't even clear my utility can handle the flexibility on offer. Putting it together, I'd essentially have to build my own micro-grid with full island mode... and I don't even have solar in the mix.
The new Hummer EV carries around a 212kWh battery, you could get 9 integrated panel systems for large homes for that much batter capacity. But even to integrate circuit sharing one has to do it at the plug to conform to local codes, we just don't have the support down to the trades level for the kinds of new solutions that would make the transition easier. We built up these regulations to improve home safety, it has been a great success, but we need to step up now to unlock future improvements and not sit back accept traditional practices as immutable.
Fortunately there are some utilities that are seeing the (LED) light. I’m in NH and next door in VT Green Mountain Power is offering free Tesla Powerwalls to people in exchange for being able to tap into that storage to smooth the demand curve. I’m pushing my rural co-op to do the same. It’s saving people and utilities money, reducing demand peaks, and allows for a cleaner grid. Add in customer-generators with solar or wind with storage and it’s a big win. Plus their customers will have battery back up during an outage, reducing the impact of the outage to all customers.
It's too bad energy efficiency and electrification aren't valued as much as a new kitchen, deck, family room, or pool for example. People are willing to spend considerably more on this sort of thing.
I work in electrification and it is becoming the new thing. Still not as common as the others of course, but as the climate crisis comes clearly into view I have more and more customers coming to me for solar, heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, and EV chargers. My company doesn’t do weatherization, but I have a good relationship with several that do in my state, and always guide my customers to our state energy savings website. I try to guide them from general ideas to having a good road map to meet their goals. For some it’s simply adding solar, for others it’s “let me know everything because it’s too overwhelming but I want to do it right”. I love helping people figure out how to make their home more comfortable, efficient, and save money!
Thanks for the episode. I know you mentioned home benchmarking and being able to see home energy use on Zillow. Minneapolis has required energy benchmarks for large buildings. They also have energy disclosure reports for individual homes that are for sale. They even have education for local realtors on the value and benefits of energy efficiency. There was a lot of advocacy to get the ordinances passed but this is the sort of local direct action that folks can do in their area. https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/programs-initiatives/environmental-programs/energy-benchmarking/
I'm afraid we'll see soft costs of some of these upgrades go up.
The landlord situation is really sad. Mine is blowing through their recent [huge] profits on aesthetic improvements, despite several tenants owning EVs.
Also, the big contractors that advertise on TV are offering free furnace with the purchase of an A/C unit. Who's funding that?
The nice thing about Heat Pumps is that they warm your living space in the winter and give you AC in the summer. Depending on how many tons your dwelling is specified for, you will use a 20 amp breaker up to a 60 amp breaker for the heat pump.
Thank you for this excellent comprehensive piece! The details here are so helpful. Electrifying is still super complex — and so, so expensive, even with rebates and incentives. We're lucky to have plenty of help available in the SF Bay Area, and it's still tough. I've been working in clean energy for a decade, we have solar, and I get that there will be cost savings over time, but my husband and I still don't have tons of cash lying around. We managed to get a heat pump water heater for $3500 after all the incentives and rebates, most of which were specific to California (https://flowerchild.substack.com/p/a-shower-powered-by-the-sun). A heat pump heater will cost way more than that. We have to make it easier and more affordable if we want people to electrify.
Agree. When I quote a heat pump water heater it’s still generally about $5k-6k before any rebates. The heater itself isn’t that expensive, but here in northern New England it usually involves removing the existing indirect tank from the boiler, flushing the boiler, then installing the new tank in its place. It often needs a condensate pump installed, as well as some other components based on each situation. Our electrician and plumber take around 6-8 hours per tank to ensure it’s all correct. This includes getting the homeowner familiar with the app, showing them how it all works, etc. but it’s not cheap. The IRA rebates and tax credit helps a lot though.
We also often pair it with a solar quote though (we do a lot of things) and the operating cost savings with solar can be very impressive!
Apparently, prices are much higher where we live than in most regions. Luckily, incentives are also high right now. But it's a major expense. Already having solar definitely made it more attractive for us, since we'll now be heating our water almost for free. But I don't know when we'll have the cash for a heat pump heater to replace our gas furnace. These appliances need to get more affordable!
Thanks, Dave and Cora - awesome episode, and just what I needed! There were definitely some "rule of thumb" things in here that I did not have, though I was familiar with some of Rewiring America's excellent publications. It is just so helpful to have the benefit of someone who has an overview of LOTS of these projects and the state of play. Thank YOU!
I wish the idea of usage-driven merit order had been discussed more. I run my heat very rarely, even during cold periods (most of the time just putting on a jacket indoors). On the other hand, I cook every day.
I think the conversation as it turned to energy intensity of appliances touches on the concept of merit order in a useful way. There are many measures of merit order, and the visible use of a range top is certainly more charismatic than the hidden usage of a hot water heater for most everyday users of both appliances. Energy intensity, as discussed, is a metric that avoids observation bias and serves a useful function in maximizing the potential of the limited panel capacity resource to facilitate the transition.
In my own electrification journey I considered primarily the carbon merit order. Replacing my furnace and hot water heater avoided 9.5tons of CO₂ annually, whereas the range top is contributing only a few pounds annually - I didn't have panel space for all three so it was an easy choice despite the everyday use of the range.
The worse IAQ problem is from the gas oven, because, instead of modulating like one controls the burners, it cycles on and off and each start/stop results in very incomplete combustion. And the "modern" US std. microwave w/integrated "vent," is piss poor at capturing those fumes.
I was a happy camper when I looked behind my gas stove and low and behold there was a stove electric outlet too. And a scratch and dent induction stove of the right size at the local Habitat ReStore.
Fortunately my oven was already electric, but the gas range-top air vent was connected to... the interior of the island cabinet it was sitting above rather than outside. After fixing the duct work and replacing the failed fan I got a uHoo air quality sensor to check what in the house was problematic for IAQ and could not replicate the popular study from a few years ago about gas stoves. Maybe it was due to origin of the gas, local additives, or just the ventilation actually working now, but a car returning to the garage had a bigger impact on IAQ than cooking a meal for 5 on this range. My mom's new natural gas furnace (she was talked into a dual-fuel system by the contractor) does contribute negatively to IAQ, so it is always worth digging in before making major updates to make sure you are getting what you need and expect.
I'm looking forward to an Impulse Labs or Channing Street Copper (or equiv) induction range plus battery to come down in price so I can eliminate another gas pipe in the house. Just this week I nixed a fireplace insert and yard BBQ built in, leaving only the range and the backup generator (rural enough to have 3-4 days without power each year).
I want to hear someone work through some scenarios and the affective tax credits.
It is a burden to understand. While tax credits get mentioned a lot, there is not a lot of in depth discussion out there.
In this pod, it was recommended to start electrification with an EV. The Resi Clean Energy Credit was also mentioned. But things like "you don't get the panel upgrade credit just for installing an EV charger" are not said.
We've completely electrified our older (1904) home in central WA State on a modest income with a family of 5. I have a few suggestions, some of which contrast with the ideas presented on the pod:
1. Don't skimp, if you have a 100 A panel, upgrade it. Get it done at the same time you do solar (see #2) and include it in the install cost (i.e. get 30% paid for by the feds)
2. Get solar first and, if you're swapping out gas for electric alternatives, size your system for double whatever you are currently using. I say do this first because having solar is the gateway drug for all the other upgrades. Once you have solar, you start paying attention to your production/consumption and it turns the whole thing into a game.
3. Skip the energy audit, I can tell you what they will say without even looking at your house. Add insulation in your attic, and if you have single-pane aluminum windows, get them replaced.
4. Running a 24 or 32-A EVSE (EV Charger) will not improve your efficiency, it will just slow down your charging speed. Can you live with 32A? Maybe, but if you have to put in a new 240V circuit anyway, just size it for a 60A breaker/48A EVSE.
5. Don't take sh!t from an HVAC contractor. If they say a heat pump won't work, tell them they just lost the job. Get a Mitsubishi, they are the best!
6. Cutting my gas pipe (after it was turned off) was more satisfying than I ever dreamed it would be. SO GOOD!
7. The final reason to electrify - other than climate and economic - is good ol' fashion SPITE! When the US went to hell in 2016 and we pulled out of Paris, I decided I'd spend as much as I had to to do my part. I guess I should thank Dump for being a malevolent A$$hole.
Actually the energy audit should include a blower door test which helps identify air leakage. Leakage can be a major source of heat loss especially in older homes like yours. Wall insulation can also be a major issue. If you have a basement or crawlspace insulating and sealing the walls and headers can also be helpful. Also if the audit is done correctly you should be able to determine your design heating and cooling loads. This should give you the approximate sizing of your heat pump. For your house and your situation it may be as simple as attic and aluminum windows being replaced but for many it can be quite a bit more involved.
Before I knew better, I had several audits done in previous homes, and none of them ever did a blower door test. Regardless, it'll be cheaper to slightly upsize everything on your HVAC (and solar) than it will be to do a deep energy retrofit on an older home.
I'm an Energy Advisor in Canada so I'm not sure how it works in the U.S. But an Energy Advisor here are required to do a blower door test on every house they audit and then do another when they go back for upgrade confirmation during the post retrofit audit. The cost isn't that much to do an audit here and until recently most of the audit cost was covered by the rebate programs. How much does an energy audit cost in Washington?
Peter, I did not mean to offend your profession. Pardon me if I was insensitive.
The energy auditors I've worked with did an initial assessment by looking at my windows, attic, crawl space, etc. They gave me the standard suggestions and the option of a more comprehensive audit that would include the blower door test but said it probably wasn't worth it in my 100+-year-old house unless I was planning to do a $40K retrofit of my exterior walls.
At the beginning of my electrification journey, I was all about energy efficiency and sealing and insulating and I even wanted to build to Passive House standards. And then the cost of solar was cut in half, and then half of that and half of that, etc., and doing all that other stuff no longer made any sense. I insulated my attic and crawl space, swapped out my windows, and put in a massive solar array. The house is comfy all year round, and the solar array powers everything including my cars.
Hi Mark, no worries. I think with all professions you can get different levels of work. It sounds like you did a great job with your home. I would strongly disagree with the energy auditor though, old houses can lose as much as 40% of their heat through air leakage. It's often the newer tighter houses that can be harder to improve. I usually do a walk around with the customer with the blower door on. In older houses, we will often be able to find a full page list of air leakage locations.
I think there is a big difference in licensing standards across the border. NRCan has a central licensing whereas in the US you are very likely to get a recommended energy audit from a contractor in the business of selling HVAC, insulation, or windows - or all of the above, while pushing the incentives favored by the referring utility. There is no follow-up post-project to evaluate differences, and no data collected in the home, just boilerplate recommendations aligned with their normal business. I'm sure one can find a 3rd party validator, but the utilities and contractors are closely aligned to harvest available incentives rather than optimize one's home or comfort.
Every window in my 40 year old home had failed seals, but since they were already double pane and there were no incentives available for replacing them it wasn't a top finding in the audit... except for the contractor associated with selling new windows.
And since Puget Sound Energy sells natural gas service of course there was an incentive on a natural gas furnace and water heater. It took 5 years to find a contractor willing to do a full electrification and I had to go to commercial services instead of residential providers. The utility still sends me discounts on new gas appliances and frets over my decreased gas consumption. The full-service electrification contractors identified as an emerging service opportunity are sorely needed, but this is also a place where the administrative state and proper licensing could have a big impact on citizen's home energy consumption outcomes.
It's a little disappointing how slow the rebate rollout to states is going. I wish this were moving faster for political and climate reasons.
A few years ago Dave interviewed a guy who ran a "one-stop-shop" for home efficiency and electrification. He called the EE regs and bureaucracy in the US, "Soviet style." There is a lot of "everything bagel liberalism," trying to solve poverty, discrimination etc., through efficiency policies while not annoying unions, etc. And as noted in this pod, it's one part of the IRA that is very limited in total outlays.
I don't believe heat pump dryers were mentioned.
I have been mentioning them to some of my customers. I like the GE washer/heat pump dryer all in one combo. Very cool system. When my washer and dryer die that’s the next step.
And it's 120V. So, generally no new circuit, or you can convert that circuit to one of the other items.
Greensavers is the go-to electrification contractor in Oregon.
We had a whole home surge protector installed at our panel when they put in our heat pump and heat pump water heater.
Mitsubishi has a link to certified contractors for their heat pumps on their website.
PA is in the process of updating to the more energy efficient 2021 IECC. I'm learning it's not a very democratic process. I'd love if you'd do an episode about the craziness of building codes.
Jo Dean you nailed it!
Building codes are such an issue. In NH we have very few incentives compared to MA, VT, and ME around us. On the flip side we have a lot of restrictive laws for clean energy installations. Home battery storage has to have a dry walled room with fire rates doors and a hardwired smoke detector. This adds several thousand dollars for those looking to install batteries. The other states have no such issues, and Green Mountain Power in VT has incentives to install batteries. They exchange battery storage for access to it during peak times, saving themselves and consumers millions of dollars, while reducing the need for expensive peaker plant energy.
Newest episode - I feel like I had a premonition!
Great conversation. I'd love to see whole-stack electrification consultants become a thing to help homeowners and renters maximize the efficiency of their homes.
The introduction of power efficiency of appliances is a topic that deserves more light, but exposes gaps in the US management of power and community assets.
In my home a modest battery in the panel, 25KWh, could cut by a third my peak energy draw from the grid per hour and double the energy delivered from the grid over the course of a year. This lightens the load on the grid, meaning my neighbors and I are less likely to crowd each other out in periods of high demand, and dramatically improves the grid's ability to get the power into the point of consumption.
The challenge lies in identifying who has an incentive to develop and deploy that appliance/asset/DER into the real world. To do it myself I'd have to violate more than a few codes and it isn't even clear my utility can handle the flexibility on offer. Putting it together, I'd essentially have to build my own micro-grid with full island mode... and I don't even have solar in the mix.
The new Hummer EV carries around a 212kWh battery, you could get 9 integrated panel systems for large homes for that much batter capacity. But even to integrate circuit sharing one has to do it at the plug to conform to local codes, we just don't have the support down to the trades level for the kinds of new solutions that would make the transition easier. We built up these regulations to improve home safety, it has been a great success, but we need to step up now to unlock future improvements and not sit back accept traditional practices as immutable.
Fortunately there are some utilities that are seeing the (LED) light. I’m in NH and next door in VT Green Mountain Power is offering free Tesla Powerwalls to people in exchange for being able to tap into that storage to smooth the demand curve. I’m pushing my rural co-op to do the same. It’s saving people and utilities money, reducing demand peaks, and allows for a cleaner grid. Add in customer-generators with solar or wind with storage and it’s a big win. Plus their customers will have battery back up during an outage, reducing the impact of the outage to all customers.
It's too bad energy efficiency and electrification aren't valued as much as a new kitchen, deck, family room, or pool for example. People are willing to spend considerably more on this sort of thing.
I work in electrification and it is becoming the new thing. Still not as common as the others of course, but as the climate crisis comes clearly into view I have more and more customers coming to me for solar, heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, and EV chargers. My company doesn’t do weatherization, but I have a good relationship with several that do in my state, and always guide my customers to our state energy savings website. I try to guide them from general ideas to having a good road map to meet their goals. For some it’s simply adding solar, for others it’s “let me know everything because it’s too overwhelming but I want to do it right”. I love helping people figure out how to make their home more comfortable, efficient, and save money!
Thanks for the episode. I know you mentioned home benchmarking and being able to see home energy use on Zillow. Minneapolis has required energy benchmarks for large buildings. They also have energy disclosure reports for individual homes that are for sale. They even have education for local realtors on the value and benefits of energy efficiency. There was a lot of advocacy to get the ordinances passed but this is the sort of local direct action that folks can do in their area. https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/programs-initiatives/environmental-programs/energy-benchmarking/
https://www.mncee.org/energy-disclosure
Funny - I just linked to the Dec. 2022 episode, earlier. I will echo that it is worth a listen.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/induction-stoves-with-batteries-built
I'm afraid we'll see soft costs of some of these upgrades go up.
The landlord situation is really sad. Mine is blowing through their recent [huge] profits on aesthetic improvements, despite several tenants owning EVs.
Also, the big contractors that advertise on TV are offering free furnace with the purchase of an A/C unit. Who's funding that?
So many thoughts, but I'll shut up. Good episode.
The nice thing about Heat Pumps is that they warm your living space in the winter and give you AC in the summer. Depending on how many tons your dwelling is specified for, you will use a 20 amp breaker up to a 60 amp breaker for the heat pump.
Thank you for this excellent comprehensive piece! The details here are so helpful. Electrifying is still super complex — and so, so expensive, even with rebates and incentives. We're lucky to have plenty of help available in the SF Bay Area, and it's still tough. I've been working in clean energy for a decade, we have solar, and I get that there will be cost savings over time, but my husband and I still don't have tons of cash lying around. We managed to get a heat pump water heater for $3500 after all the incentives and rebates, most of which were specific to California (https://flowerchild.substack.com/p/a-shower-powered-by-the-sun). A heat pump heater will cost way more than that. We have to make it easier and more affordable if we want people to electrify.
Agree. When I quote a heat pump water heater it’s still generally about $5k-6k before any rebates. The heater itself isn’t that expensive, but here in northern New England it usually involves removing the existing indirect tank from the boiler, flushing the boiler, then installing the new tank in its place. It often needs a condensate pump installed, as well as some other components based on each situation. Our electrician and plumber take around 6-8 hours per tank to ensure it’s all correct. This includes getting the homeowner familiar with the app, showing them how it all works, etc. but it’s not cheap. The IRA rebates and tax credit helps a lot though.
We also often pair it with a solar quote though (we do a lot of things) and the operating cost savings with solar can be very impressive!
Apparently, prices are much higher where we live than in most regions. Luckily, incentives are also high right now. But it's a major expense. Already having solar definitely made it more attractive for us, since we'll now be heating our water almost for free. But I don't know when we'll have the cash for a heat pump heater to replace our gas furnace. These appliances need to get more affordable!
Thanks, Dave and Cora - awesome episode, and just what I needed! There were definitely some "rule of thumb" things in here that I did not have, though I was familiar with some of Rewiring America's excellent publications. It is just so helpful to have the benefit of someone who has an overview of LOTS of these projects and the state of play. Thank YOU!
I wish the idea of usage-driven merit order had been discussed more. I run my heat very rarely, even during cold periods (most of the time just putting on a jacket indoors). On the other hand, I cook every day.
I think the conversation as it turned to energy intensity of appliances touches on the concept of merit order in a useful way. There are many measures of merit order, and the visible use of a range top is certainly more charismatic than the hidden usage of a hot water heater for most everyday users of both appliances. Energy intensity, as discussed, is a metric that avoids observation bias and serves a useful function in maximizing the potential of the limited panel capacity resource to facilitate the transition.
In my own electrification journey I considered primarily the carbon merit order. Replacing my furnace and hot water heater avoided 9.5tons of CO₂ annually, whereas the range top is contributing only a few pounds annually - I didn't have panel space for all three so it was an easy choice despite the everyday use of the range.
The worse IAQ problem is from the gas oven, because, instead of modulating like one controls the burners, it cycles on and off and each start/stop results in very incomplete combustion. And the "modern" US std. microwave w/integrated "vent," is piss poor at capturing those fumes.
I was a happy camper when I looked behind my gas stove and low and behold there was a stove electric outlet too. And a scratch and dent induction stove of the right size at the local Habitat ReStore.
Fortunately my oven was already electric, but the gas range-top air vent was connected to... the interior of the island cabinet it was sitting above rather than outside. After fixing the duct work and replacing the failed fan I got a uHoo air quality sensor to check what in the house was problematic for IAQ and could not replicate the popular study from a few years ago about gas stoves. Maybe it was due to origin of the gas, local additives, or just the ventilation actually working now, but a car returning to the garage had a bigger impact on IAQ than cooking a meal for 5 on this range. My mom's new natural gas furnace (she was talked into a dual-fuel system by the contractor) does contribute negatively to IAQ, so it is always worth digging in before making major updates to make sure you are getting what you need and expect.
I'm looking forward to an Impulse Labs or Channing Street Copper (or equiv) induction range plus battery to come down in price so I can eliminate another gas pipe in the house. Just this week I nixed a fireplace insert and yard BBQ built in, leaving only the range and the backup generator (rural enough to have 3-4 days without power each year).
I’m trying to replace my kitchen Aid superba 24 inch double oven
Any suggestions or places to go for suggestions?
I want to hear someone work through some scenarios and the affective tax credits.
It is a burden to understand. While tax credits get mentioned a lot, there is not a lot of in depth discussion out there.
In this pod, it was recommended to start electrification with an EV. The Resi Clean Energy Credit was also mentioned. But things like "you don't get the panel upgrade credit just for installing an EV charger" are not said.
I went through the planner and found it wouldn't change my bill at all.