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.
Text transcript:
David Roberts
The message is starting to get out that decarbonizing your life means electrifying your life: your car, your home, your appliances. In virtually every case, even on relatively dirty grids, electric alternatives represent fewer net carbon emissions. They often produce financial savings as well, especially over time, but not always — that depends on circumstances like weather, geography, and the price of fossil gas.
People who do set out to electrify their homes often find the process bewildering. Do you need to upgrade your panel? How big a heat pump do you need? Does your stove matter? It's difficult to know where to start, what to prioritize, how to assess contractors, and how to track down incentives and rebates.
Into this mess comes a very handy new tool called the “personal electrification planner,” from Rewiring America. You can put in some basic info about your house and it will help walk you step by step through how to make a plan, find contractors, and finish projects.
To discuss the many questions that face homeowners and renters interested in electrification, I chatted with Rewiring's research director, Cora Wyent. We discussed electrical panels and insulation, EVs and appliances, finding contractors, and yes, what you can do as a renter. I think you will find this one super helpful.
Okay, then, with no further ado, Cora Wyent, research director for Rewiring America. Thanks for coming.
Cora Wyent
Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.
David Roberts
So, this is a topic of such intense interest to so many people. So for all the sort of talk that's been for months, years now about all the policies that are passing and all the rebates and all the excitement and all the money flowing into this space and all the sort of promise of electrification, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, at the end of the day, there's just a lot of people sitting at home thinking, "All right, well, what do I do first? I'm here, what do I do? What does all this mean for me?" So we're going to try to sort of walk through that a little bit today and give people just a way to wrap their heads around this project, a way to wrap their heads around the task at hand.
So I want to start with homeowners and just all you renters out there: we see you. We know you're out there, we know you're neglected and you don't get enough attention. And we will be returning to you later, but for now, I just want to start. People have homes, they're sitting in them and they're thinking, "I'd like to do some of this electrification stuff." So I guess my first question is, are people approaching this as an "I want to save money" thing or as an "I want to reduce my personal emissions" thing? Obviously, there's a little bit of both, but how do you see those two motivations?
What do you hear most often from homeowners? And will you go about it differently if you are focusing on one of those or the other? Do you know what I mean?
Cora Wyent
Yeah. So I think people are approaching it from different motivations, right now. I would say currently the realm of home electrification is still in its early adopter phase, and most of those folks who are early adopters are interested in it primarily for climate reasons. In my organization, I think the work of the whole movement is really going beyond that early adopter phase and getting everyone to electrify. So up until this point, I would say most folks are in that climate-motivated category, but we're starting to see more people in the energy bill savings category jump on board.
And certainly with EVs and the transportation sector, which I think is ahead of the home electrification sector, I think we've already seen that shift from climate-motivated early adopters to bill savings-motivated later adopters. We've got to see that in the home electrification space, too.
David Roberts
Yeah, you get into a little bit of the same ambiguity, which is people are doing all this, like how many angels on the head of a pin calculations about whether you save money on EVs, like over what time frame and counting, what costs and all this, can you say as a blanket statement that every homeowner can save money by electrifying or is it still context-dependent? Because technologies are still coming along, contractors are still kind of educating themselves, policies still coming along, grids are still not as clean as they're going to be, shortly. So is it still kind of an up in the air thing, or do you feel confident that almost everyone can get some savings out of this?
Cora Wyent
It's still context-dependent. So in cases where you're switching from inefficient electric resistance heating or propane or fuel oil, then it's almost a guarantee that you'll save money when you electrify. But the place where it gets a little bit more murky right now is folks who are currently heating their homes using natural gas in their homes or methane gas. I'm not sure what your policy is on the podcast about naming —
David Roberts
I think fossil gas, fossil gas is what I've settled on.
Cora Wyent
Awesome. Okay. Well, in the case of fossil gas, then it depends on where you are and what the relative electricity rates and gas rates are. So in certain places, for example, Georgia, places in the southeast where gas is pretty expensive and electricity is relatively cheap, pretty much everyone will save by electrifying. In a place like California where electricity is pretty expensive relative to gas, not everyone is going to save by electrifying right now. So we're still in a phase where it is context-dependent whether you can expect to save or not.
David Roberts
So you do have to do a little thinking, a little math, some planning. So I have a kind of a bucket of things here that I think of as kind of "what to do before you launch into this," before you launch into the actual electrification of your home. One is just making a plan. This is all about — just to set some context for the listeners — this is all about this personal electrification planner that Rewiring has put together. In part, I think, to help with this stage of things, which is the making a plan thing. So when you say "make a plan," what sort of considerations go into that?
What's involved in that?
Cora Wyent
Yeah, so I think making a plan, it's important for a number of reasons. One is that some of the tax credits that you mentioned earlier, they're things that reset every year. So you want to do your heat pump in one year, your heat pump, water heater in a separate year to get that full tax credit.
David Roberts
Oh, you mean they reset for the individual homeowner. Like you can only get so —
Cora Wyent
Yeah. And then another reason is there are sort of these constraints based on your electrical panel size and you can really save a lot of money if you can avoid upgrading your electrical panel. But for some households, that does require some careful planning up front so that you don't accidentally do one electrification project and then suddenly exceed your panel's capacity. So really important reasons to start with a plan up front. And I think the most important thing is really to ask yourself that question that you asked me earlier around motivation: So why are you electrifying?
David Roberts
Right.
Cora Wyent
Are you electrifying for climate reasons? Are you electrifying to save money on your bills, or are you electrifying for one of those reasons, but you really don't have the money available to make that upfront investment? My wife and I actually electrified many of our own appliances this past fall, and we were in that latter category of trying to save money on upfront costs. So we were doing the "when it dies, electrify" motto, and that motivation will really dictate the order of the actions that you want to take.
David Roberts
I want to get to that in a second, the sort of merit order, as it were. But yeah, this is maybe one important thing to emphasize here is: It's good to, even if you are not going to replace anything until it dies — which I think is like the default mostly other than the early adopters, most people sort of do it that way. It's good to not be in a panic the weekend something dies. Right. It's good to have a sort of a plan or a thought in place, some preparation in place so you're ready when that happens.
Cora Wyent
Exactly, yeah. You don't want to be — all of a sudden your water heater dies and you're out of hot water until you call the electrician, get the new circuit, get all the new quotes for heat pump water heaters. So there's a lot to be said for preparing upfront and making sure you're ready for that appliance failure.
David Roberts
One thing you hear a lot is before you switch out your furnace, you want to minimize your consumption basically through efficiency. You can have a sort of company come in and do an efficiency assessment. There's envelope sealing, there's insulation. I guess I'm wondering, is it the case that everybody would benefit from doing that stuff first before they start on this other stuff? Some people obviously are going to have houses that are relatively modern, relatively well sealed already, well insulated already. But at least do you think everybody should at least check in on that before they get started with the other stuff?
Cora Wyent
I think best case scenario, everyone would check in first, but I think a lot of what we're trying to do too is make this easy for people and minimize friction. So I would say my general rule of thumb is if you live in a cold climate where you're really regularly seeing temperatures below freezing or especially below zero, then I would say it's really important to do that energy audit and look into some air sealing and insulation before you look into electrification. I live in Los Angeles and my home is decently well insulated. So we just went ahead and got a heat pump without insulating first.
But I think that's really crucial in cold climates to do some of that pre-work so that when you get to installing a heat pump, you can install a heat pump that's a lot smaller and save money on that upfront cost.
David Roberts
Yeah, and there are other reasons, which we're going to get to in a minute, that you want kind of the lowest capacity heat pump that you can get away with and you can get away with a lower one if your house is better sealed.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, absolutely.
David Roberts
Just right here I think a lot of people already are like, "this is starting to sound like a headache" because I'll say, when we were thinking about this with our house switching out the furnace and we did all that kind of stuff, like probably like ten years ago, and we wanted to get an efficiency sort of assessment done, it was not easy to sort of figure out who would do it or what the mechanisms are. Has it gotten better? Are there people I can just call and be like, will you come check my insulation and my envelope and see if they're okay? Is this a one phone call thing now, or is this still a little bit of work?
Cora Wyent
Yeah, I would say pretty much anywhere in the country now you'll be able to find an energy auditor, and that's the person who you would want to call to do that check for you. And if you want to know where to start looking for energy auditors, one really good place to start is utility programs. So often utilities will have programs that give you a discount on an energy audit or connect you to an energy auditor. There's also federal tax credits available for energy audits. So I think those are some really good places to start for folks looking to do that.
David Roberts
Okay. Especially in cold climates, I guess in LA, where it's always between 68 and 70 —
Cora Wyent
Yes.
David Roberts
you don't have a ton of worries about this. The only other thing, and you alluded to this before that, I think, worries people about this, is the electrical panel thing. So just for listeners who are not briefed on this, a lot of older houses have, it's like 110 volts, I think —
Cora Wyent
100 amp.
David Roberts
100 amp. Yeah, 100 amp panels. And you need to upgrade to 220 if you want a level 2 EV charger or some of the bigger appliances. So this is another question. Does everyone need to update their wiring or how should people approach that before they get started? How should they think about the wiring in their house? What do they need to do?
Cora Wyent
Yeah, this is a really important topic, and I think this is one of the things that I would suggest people think about first when they go on their home electrification journey. And I want to clarify, there are two sort of separate concepts to think about here. One is your electrical panel. So for folks who don't know, this is where your electricity comes into your house. It's the thing that's got all the breakers on it. So if you have an appliance that suddenly trips a breaker, this is where you go to flip the breaker again, and your electrical panel is rated at a certain number of amps.
And if you want to find out your electrical panel rating, there's usually something called a main breaker, which is an extra big breaker on the top or something like that, and it will actually say a number on it, and that's how many amps your electrical panel is. So if you have an electrical panel that's 200 amps or higher, you're generally — even 150 amps — you're generally good to go to electrify without thinking too carefully about it.
David Roberts
What is the danger? Like, if I have the 100 amp panel and I plug too many big electrical appliances in it, I'm just going to fry my circuits? What am I risking there?
Cora Wyent
You'd basically trip your main breaker. So your panel, it wouldn't allow electricity to flow to your house. But in general, an electrician knows how to do these calculations, and your electrician won't let you install a new appliance or install a new circuit that's going to sort of exceed that panel capacity.
David Roberts
Got it. So if you're 150 or above, you're probably good.
Cora Wyent
Probably good. That's right. And then if you're below 100, like, there are some really old houses that have 60 amp electrical panels. In those cases, you definitely want to upgrade. It's possible, but pretty hard to electrify on a 60 amp panel. And then if you're in that 100 to 150 amp range, that's where you can electrify without doing a panel upgrade with some careful planning. And we're huge advocates for this at Rewiring America. And a lot of other organizations are too, because panel upgrades are expensive. A study showed that they can be anywhere from $3,000 to, like $30,000 depending on —
David Roberts
Yikes!
Cora Wyent
yes, exactly. It depends on whether the lines to your house run underground. It depends on how many people sort of are on your same set of wiring from the utility. So in that sort of intermediate 100 to 150 range, what you really want to do is make a plan to electrify in a way where you can stay on your existing panel. And the key to that is using power-efficient appliances. These are appliances that provide you with the same performance that meet all of your needs, but they draw less power at any given time. So one really good example of a power-efficient appliance is an EV charger, that's say, 24 or 32 amps, rather than the standard EV charger, which is 40 amps.
A 40 amp charger gives you about 300 miles of charge overnight. A 24 amp charger gives you about 180 miles of charge overnight: 180 miles is a lot. I don't really know many people who are driving 180 miles a day. So for the most part, you can really get by on some of these more power-efficient devices that are going to sort of take up less space on your panel and allow you to fit everything in. Even if you're in that sort of 100 to 150 amp panel range.
David Roberts
Is there a reason why you wouldn't want to get the most power-efficient appliances regardless?
Cora Wyent
That's a great point, and I think absolutely, it's always a good idea to get the most power-efficient appliances. The way to think about it is that you're basically leaving room on the grid for your neighbors to electrify, too.
David Roberts
Right.
Cora Wyent
And I know you've done a lot of podcasts recently on the need to upgrade our electrical grid and some different strategies for that. And what the grid really cares about is not so much how much energy you're using, but how much power you're using, which is how much energy you are using in a certain period of time.
David Roberts
Right.
Cora Wyent
So if you can get those power-efficient devices, you're doing a service to the grid for your neighbors and for everyone else who's trying to electrify too.
David Roberts
Is there any role, or do you think at all in this capacity about these new smart panels that are coming out? Because I think one of the things those smart panels promise is that they will move load around so that it's timed such that you never have those big peaks. Right. I mean, that's kind of one of the things that smart panels do for you, allegedly.
Cora Wyent
Yes, exactly. I think there's a great role for smart panels here. So you can think of it as, as you cook dinner, maybe the smart panel is going to pause your EV charging temporarily. You won't even notice. You'll still get all the miles you need overnight. So I think smart panels are a fantastic solution for this sort of panel optimization and management. And there are also other cool devices that are a little bit, maybe less expensive upfront, like circuit sharing devices. So if you have, like, a single 240 volts outlet, which is one of those big round outlets for your dryer, you can actually plug both your dryer and your EV charger into one of these.
David Roberts
Oh, really?
Cora Wyent
They're called circuit sharing devices. There's a couple of different brands, like Simple Switch, Dryer Buddy, NeoCharge, I think are a couple of them.
David Roberts
Like a splitter, almost?
Cora Wyent
Yes, exactly. And you can basically define like, "Okay, I want my dryer to take priority. So when my dryer is on, pause my EV charging."
David Roberts
So this little device will manage the connection so that it doesn't get overwhelmed.
Cora Wyent
Exactly, yeah. Really cool.
David Roberts
All right, so if you're between 100 and 150, you got to do some thinking about how to get the lowest power demand appliances possible and maybe some of these circuit management things. You're going to have to do a little extra thinking to try to keep yourself under this threshold of upgrading. Because upgrading — this is the thing I hear from a lot of people — it's just like this kind of fear around or this sense, that "I have to upgrade my panel, and that's hugely expensive, and that's before anything else," scares a lot of people off, I think.
Cora Wyent
Yes, definitely. And some resources I'd recommend for doing that sort of panel management. One is, David, you mentioned the personal electrification planner that Rewiring America just launched. So you can check that out at homes.rewiringamerica.org — I'll do a little promo there.
David Roberts
Yes, you can tell the planner I have, whatever, a 100 amp circuit; tell me a suite of appliances that will come in under that, basically.
Cora Wyent
Well, we're not quite there yet, but that is on the roadmap, so hopefully we can offer that soon. But for right now there are just a lot of really detailed articles that outline like, okay, here's the suite of options to consider if you're trying to use these power-efficient devices.
David Roberts
Okay, so say we have a rough plan in place. Our envelope is relatively sealed, our house is well insulated and reasonably efficient, our panel is ready to go. Then we're going to start electrification: Then you run into the question of you got your car, your appliances, the question of rooftop solar, the question of home batteries, all of those things that are involved in some way or another in the full meal-deal of electrification. How do you think about merit order here? So how do you think about what to prioritize and where to start? I think that alone sort of baffles a lot of people.
Like is there a clear "this first, this second," or does it depend in some sense on your priorities?
Cora Wyent
Yes, so I think the first step — or if we consider the plan to be step zero — step one is actually pre-wiring your home for electrification. So we can get into that in a little bit more too because I think that's a really important step and it can save folks a lot of money in the long term.
David Roberts
Wait, that's different than the panel thing.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
David Roberts
Well, let's talk about it real quick then. What do we mean by pre-wiring?
Cora Wyent
So the panel I mentioned, you've got these amperage ratings of your panel. And then I mentioned there was this separate concept, which is, do you have the right circuits to electrify your home? And the circuit is the wire that goes from your panel to the outlet where your appliance is. So if you have a gas stove right now, for example, you probably don't have a 240 volts outlet, which is those big circular outlets behind your stove. And you're going to need one of those to electrify. So you need an electrician to come out and run that 240 volts circuit to your gas stove.
David Roberts
Is that expensive, just adding a circuit to an existing panel?
Cora Wyent
It can be. We estimate it's around $1,000. So it's not negligible for sure. And pretty much anytime that you're upgrading a fossil fuel to an electric device, you usually have to run that 240 volts circuit for a new appliance. There's one exception to that, which is really cool, which is that a lot of 120 volts models which just plug into a normal wall outlet are coming out. So there are these amazing new water heaters that are 120 volts heat pump water heaters that actually just plug directly into a normal outlet.
David Roberts
Interesting. And the stove with the battery in it.
Cora Wyent
Exactly, yes.
David Roberts
Which we covered on a podcast here last year. Because the power is in the appliance, you don't need that big circuit. You can get away with 120 there, I think, too.
Cora Wyent
Exactly. Yeah, that's right.
David Roberts
So you got to wire your house for electricity, which generally will mean your stove, your furnace, and your water heater. Are there other ones that are big enough that you have to think about rewiring for them?
Cora Wyent
Well, for the furnace, we actually don't recommend pre-wiring. We recommend that you do that when you install the heat pump, just because it's a little bit more complicated and you don't really know where the outdoor unit and where the indoor unit are going to go. So the main ones that we recommend pre-wiring for would be your stove, your water heater, your dryer, and then your EV charger. And those are all — unless you're going with one of these 120 volts options — those are all 240 volts circuits that you'll need, if you don't already have one, to the appliance.
David Roberts
Some of which could theoretically be shared with the circuit splitter, though, if your geography of your house works out, I guess the right way.
Cora Wyent
Exactly.
David Roberts
Okay, so that's the last pre-item then: pre-wiring. You got a plan, your house is efficient, your panels ready to go, and you're prewired. Now you're ready to actually start. So what is first?
Cora Wyent
So, that depends on your motivation, and again, depends on whether you're doing the "electrify when you die" strategy. Let's say you're a Volts listener, you're climate motivated. You really want to just have the maximum impact on your emissions. In that case, the order would be your first three would pretty much be your EV, your heat pump, and — depends on where you are — but rooftop solar or the heat pump water heater. And when we think about home energy consumption, 60% to 80% of that is from space heating, cooling, and water heating. So really those big ticket items from an emissions reductions perspective are the heat pump and the heat pump water heater. And then EVs and solar I think we consider sort of extras that are beneficial to home electrification, but not one of those four core home electrification technologies.
David Roberts
It seems like a car is kind of the place to start for everybody. Is that not so?
Cora Wyent
I would say that's fair from an emissions and a bill savings perspective, an EV is a pretty good bet.
David Roberts
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you get your EV — if you can — and you've got your panel wired up to support an EV and you got the 240 volts outlet installed to charge your EV. That alone is like, that's a big chunk to take off. And so then next you're turning to your appliances. So you say in terms of emissions, we start with space heating. So let's talk heat pumps then. Heat pumps are pretty much, that's the electric heating solution that you recommend for all residential, basically. Right. This is one where you don't really have to make a choice. I say that even though I immediately am going to take it back since there are choices about what kind of heat pump.
So one thing that vexes a lot of people is, "are heat pumps going to work for me or am I going to need some sort of backup?" What is the state of the conversation? Are heat pumps good enough now that almost everyone can get away with just a heat pump or what percentage of people are going to need something more than that?
Cora Wyent
Yeah. So heat pumps have advanced a lot in recent years and there are heat pumps right now that work down to -15 degrees and they're still incredibly efficient. Maine has actually been one of the states that's furthest ahead on installing heat pumps, and they've sort of gradually started removing their recommendation that people keep backup systems in place.
David Roberts
Oh, interesting.
Cora Wyent
I think unless you're in the absolute coldest places of the country where it's regularly low teens, low twenties. I think you can get away as long as you install a really good cold climate heat pump and you weatherize your home. In some cases, it might not hurt to sort of keep your existing fossil fuel system in place throughout one winter or two winters just to have that sort of assurance that you'll be okay even if there's a deep freeze. But really, these cold climate heat pumps are incredible. And a lot of people don't realize just how much the technology has advanced.
David Roberts
Yeah, well, I'll say again, like ten years ago, when we were doing all this stuff, I live in Seattle, which is incredibly temperate. It rarely gets freezing cold. And we had a big old oil, original oil heater from the 1950s when the house was built. One of those big salmon-colored things, I don't know why all appliances were salmon-colored back in the '50s and '60s. We finally got that out, and I was asking after a heat pump, and everybody I asked said, "well, you're just going to have to put a natural gas furnace in anyway as a backup for your heat pump."
So the heat pump is just basically like extra money you're spending. Why no just — the contractor community just did not see eye to eye with me at all there. And I assume that now maybe things have come along enough that I'm going to be able to find contractors who will not say that. So, most people can get away. And when you do need backup, let's say you want to rip out an oil furnace and you just want to install a heat pump and you need some backup. What is the sort of backup of choice? You can get electrical backup, too, right?
So you don't necessarily need, like, a gas hookup to have backup.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, that's right. So you can get what's called, like an electric resistance coil, which basically sits inside your air handler. So just a quick anatomy of a heat pump is that if you have a central ducted system, so if you're switching from a furnace or a central air conditioner, you'll get a ducted heat pump, which basically consists of an outdoor unit and then an indoor unit with an air handler. And the outdoor unit is what's sort of pumping heat into your house from the outside. The air handler is what's taking that heat and blowing it through your duct system.
And you can get basically a series of coils that are electric resistance, which means they operate just like a toaster. You run some current through them, they get hot, and that's a good potential backup system for heat pumps and works in most places. The one downside is that electric resistance heating is pretty expensive. So if you're in an area where you plan on using your backup system a lot, that electric resistance might be more expensive than other options.
David Roberts
And what about this question of central heat pump versus the mini split? Is it as simple as if I'm replacing a ducted system, I get a ducted heat pump system, a central heat pump system, and if I'm not, I don't. Do you recommend the sort of mini splits for people who can do it?
Cora Wyent
It's basically as simple as that. If you have ducts, then a central system is great. And if you don't have ducts, which would be the case if you currently heat with electric baseboards, or if you heat with a boiler and a system of radiators throughout the house, then you would upgrade to mini splits: Which are the ones that aren't really blowing air through your ducts. It's just an outdoor unit and then refrigerant piping and then an indoor head that you've probably seen that just sits kind of high up on the wall and blows air directly into the room.
So it's pretty much as simple as that. Sometimes people will get kind of like a hybrid system. Like they might do mini splits on one floor of their house, and a ducted system on another floor. That's an option, too.
David Roberts
And these are pretty expensive still. Like, I will say, like ten years ago, it would have been basically like installing the heat pump plus backup furnace system would have been something like $10,000 more than just the natural gas furnace. So I kind of put my tail between my legs and retreated, which I still feel bad about to this day. I got a gas hook up to my home: Ah, it's awful! But they're still expensive. How do you think about that? Are the incentives available now big enough to overcome this upfront barrier? Because it's just a fact that on the front end, the heat pump is going to look a lot more expensive than a natural gas furnace.
Cora Wyent
Yeah. So again, I think it depends a little bit. In Los Angeles, I got quoted for a heat pump that was only $2,000 more than the furnace quote. Now, I will say that is definitely not the norm. That's an outlier. I think I got lucky. So in some cases, I think the IRA incentives are a really good start, and I think they're starting to bring that cost down. I think there's still a gap to be filled, and I think that's where more state and local policy will have to come into play because we're just not going to get to mass market adoption if people look at their furnace replacement and they look at their heat pump quote, and the heat pump quote is way higher. So I think there's more work that needs to be done.
David Roberts
Yeah, people aren't going to do the lifetime calculation. You know what I mean? You might be able to make the case that, "oh, it's cheaper over the lifetime of the appliance." It probably is, but people just don't think that way. People think in terms of sticker price.
Cora Wyent
Absolutely.
David Roberts
I mean, this is a little far afield, but can we expect heat pump prices to come down? Like, are they coming down? Is this a learning by doing, you know, mass — ? Because it seems like they've been mass produced, at least in Europe and stuff, for a while now. So are they as cheap as they're going to get, or is there a lot of runway left?
Cora Wyent
What I think that we will see is installers getting more comfortable with installing them and starting to bring some of those soft costs down. So right now they're just a relatively new technology for the HVAC industry. So there's like an uncertainty buffer built into the pricing. So I think we will see costs come down on that side. In terms of manufacturing, I think you're right that they already have been manufactured for a long time. So this isn't really like the economies of scale that we saw with solar or batteries where we're going to see like exponential drops in price.
When you think about it, a heat pump is really the exact same thing as an air conditioner. It's just able to work in reverse, too. So there's only one tiny part that's different. So the manufacturing process is pretty similar to that of air conditioners, which have been around for a while now. So I think we'll see some cost reductions on the installer comfort and installer experience side, but not so much on the manufacturing and equipment side.
David Roberts
So if we're going to overcome that sticker shock problem, that's going to be a matter of policy. It's going to be a matter of policy incentives and things like that.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, I think so. And then also just workforce training and gaining experience.
David Roberts
That's my next question, which is the other thing I hear from people a ton. Most people aren't experts on this. They sort of vaguely know that heat pumps are good and they want one, and then they go talk to a quote unquote expert, a contractor who just craps all over their dreams. I hear this over and over and over again, that contractors are kind of the sand in the gears here, they don't seem to like heat pumps very well. They're full of mythology about heat pumps, about the need for backups, and about how they fail and they don't work in the cold and all this kind of stuff.
What can be done about that? Is it getting better? Are there contractors in every big city now that are better? What's the sort of state of play in the contracting community and heat pumps?
Cora Wyent
Yeah, I mean, everything you said is absolutely true. I've personally had one contractor try to talk me out of a heat pump.
David Roberts
In Los Angeles, for Christ's sake. It's amazing. What else would you?
Cora Wyent
I know, I know. But I also had one contractor who was telling me that heat pumps are the best technology, and it's the way that the whole market is moving and that you really don't want a gas furnace. So I think we're starting to see — especially in places like California, that have had more state level incentives for a long time — we're starting to see growing comfort with heat pumps in the workforce. And I think that there's a little bit of interplay between consumer demand and contractor availability and knowledge that's happening here. So the more folks that start calling contractors and asking for these technologies, the more people are going to read up on them, get experience installing with them.
So I think I have faith that that's a problem that's going to get better with time and as the market grows.
David Roberts
Yeah. I've been wondering — and maybe this is a function of me being in a little bit of a bubble — but I feel like there's enough people out there, I mean, maybe they're early adopters, but there's enough people out there that are into this, that it seems like it ought to be possible — especially in, like, a big west coast city — to be a contractor who's like, "I'm the electrification guy. I know all about the rebates, I know all about the appliances. I know about the panel. I've done these. I'm the guy or gal that you come to when you want to electrify."
Is nobody sort of filling that niche yet? Is there just not enough demand, do you think, to sort of sustain that?
Cora Wyent
I know of a contractor in New York who has done exactly that and basically positioned his company as the electrification company. So everything from EV chargers to heat pump water heaters to HVAC. Previously, that would have been sort of three different people, like an electrician, a plumber, and an HVAC installer, but he's actually brought it all in one house as this sort of electrification contractor model. And I do think we're going to start to see more of that. And I've seen a couple of businesses that seem to be that kind of business in Los Angeles, too. And I think that's a really great sort of business niche for people to enter into.
David Roberts
I mean, it's like a young, affluent market. These people who want this tend to be sort of upscale professionals. It seems like it ought to be a viable business. I've been puzzled that I haven't seen more people kind of try to take that tack. So if I'm just an ordinary schmo in like St. Louis or whatever, how do I find a good contractor? This is one of the things that I sort of ran aground on. I'm just like, am I just flipping through the friggin yellow pages here? Is there a list, do you have a list on the website of recommended contractors?
How can people get better than just sort of like throwing a dart at the phone book?
Cora Wyent
Yeah. So pairing people with qualified contractors who have experience with electrification is something that we're hoping to do through the personal electrification planner soon. So definitely sign up and stay tuned for that. But for now, the best advice I have is to Google around, look on Yelp, look on Google reviews, and just look for people who mention one of these electric technologies on their website. So that was how I screened out HVAC contractors for my house, was I made sure that they said something about heat pumps on their website. And then the other piece of advice I have there is to make sure you get three quotes, and that's a good way to make sure that you're getting a good price and also to make sure that you're getting someone who's really knowledgeable about electrification is going to give you a quality installation.
So it's definitely not all about price. You want to find someone who's going to install a technology that will make you comfortable in your home and serve your home for a long time.
David Roberts
Yeah. But at this stage of things, this is still somewhat of a kind of high-touch step. Like there's a little bit of shoe leather involved here. It's not like an off the shelf thing that you can just order and be confident in. There's a little bit of negotiating, a little bit of calling around necessary.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, absolutely. The one other thing that I'll mention, speaking about electrification contractors in that niche is there are some folks who are doing kind of like full service home electrification, where they make the plan for you and then walk you through all the steps. Most of them, I think, are only available in certain geographic areas, but that could be something to look into for folks, too.
David Roberts
Yeah, I would, and I feel confident that I'm not alone, pay quite a bit of money to avoid the headache and the hassle of this. I mean, not everybody's in a position to do that, but again, it seems like a business model that's just sitting there waiting for more people to move into it. So then contractors are a bit of a hassle. What about accessing the tax breaks and rebates and incentives? How big of a pain in the butt is that currently?
Cora Wyent
One thing to say there is that every place is going to look a little bit different. So there are these federal incentives. And just to clarify what those are, there are two different main types of federal incentives for electrification. One category is the tax credits. One category is the rebates. So the tax credits are available now, and these are the main ones that we talk about are you can get 30% back on your taxes off the cost of a heat pump or a heat pump water heater, and that's capped at $2,000. So if you install a heat pump and it's over $6,000, you can get $2,000 back when you file your taxes.
And one tip is if you do a filer like TurboTax or something, TurboTax is not going to ask you, "Did you install a heat pump this year?" So you've got to kind of manually search for that form to fill out. So tax credits are one bucket, rebates are another bucket, and those ones are not available yet.
David Roberts
These are the IRA rebates.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, exactly. And those are up to $14,000 per household. And they're targeted at low and moderate income households for electrification. And those are going to be programs that are run through individual states. And states right now are in the process of applying to the federal government to set up their rebate programs. So we think that those rebate programs might be rolling out, sort of the first ones might be rolling out later this year.
David Roberts
Interesting. But that'll be a state-by-state thing.
Cora Wyent
Exactly, yes. And then capped at $14,000 and really targeted at low and moderate income households, which is great because a lot of this is hard, a lot of this is expensive. And we want to make sure that it's not only early adopters who are electrifying, but that folks who are lower income who wouldn't fit in that early adopter category are brought along in the transition, too.
David Roberts
And this is $14,000, like inclusive total electrification money, or is that just heat pump?
Cora Wyent
$14,000 is the total cap and then there are different sort of caps for the different pieces of equipment. So a heat pump, for example, is capped at $8,000. A heat pump water heater is capped at $1,750.
David Roberts
It seems like then it would make sense, especially if you're moderate income, maybe to wait a year and see what your state turns up. I'm sure some states are going to be better on this than others.
Cora Wyent
Well, the thing to keep in mind there is that the rebates are capped overall at $4.5 billion, which sounds like a lot, but when you divide that by $14,000 it doesn't end up being that many homes overall. So I think those will be fantastic sources of funding for some households, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend waiting for them just because they will have sort of limited availability and certain states might decide to, say, target those at low income households, for example. We're not totally sure what they'll do.
David Roberts
Interesting. Yeah, that could go pretty quick.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, exactly.
David Roberts
Okay. So then I did my heat pump. Really, that and the EV, I think, like, if you're just going to do two things, those are the big — after the heat pump, then it's water heater. My question here is there are normal run-of-the-mill electric water heaters, and that qualifies as electrification, so what is the calculation here? Whether to pay the extra money for a heat pump water heater? What's the deal there?
Cora Wyent
Yeah, so heat pump water heaters are three times more efficient than regular electric resistance water heaters at least.
David Roberts
They just use less electricity.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, exactly. Because anything that uses heat pump technology is basically moving heat rather than creating heat. Electric resistance water heaters are just using that same toaster mechanism I described earlier. So, you can take whatever you would spend on your water heating with your electric water heater and divide it in three: that's about what you would spend on your heat pump water heater. So, you can save hundreds of dollars a year by switching to a heat pump water heater and use a lot less electricity.
David Roberts
But they're quite a bit more upfront, though, aren't they? I mean, it's going to be a calculation of the payback period there.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, I think that's a calculation that folks need to do — definitely take into consideration the $2,000 tax credit, too. And for doing those calculations of payback period, often people don't really know, like, "Okay, how much do I spend on water heating? How much am I going to spend when I switch?" And that was actually one of the main goals of our personal electrification planner was sort of crunching the numbers. We've got like a pretty advanced data science model that looks at how people's energy consumption and bills are going to change when they electrify based on where they live, what type of house they live in, what they heat with currently.
So, you can actually see an estimated upfront cost of a water heater and an estimated sort of annual bill savings relative to your existing water heater in that planner.
David Roberts
So that'll help do that calculation for you.
Cora Wyent
Exactly. Yeah.
David Roberts
Okay, and then once you've done space heating and water heating, you're mostly mopping up extras at that point. Do you do your dryer, your stove, is there any sort of like first, second or third? And in terms of just emissions, you could argue that if you've done your space heating and your water heating, you've tackled the bulk of it and why bother doing the rest? Sort of like what's the motivation to mop up that last 15% of power use?
Cora Wyent
Yeah, well, I think the stove is a big one for indoor air quality and health reasons —
David Roberts
As we've potted on here at Volts.
Cora Wyent
Yeah. So your listeners have probably heard that people have found a 42% increased chance of asthma when kids grow up in a home with a gas stove. So that's a big reason to get off gas for the stove. And the other sort of less appreciated reason is of all of these appliances, the stove is the one that's most visible in your home and the one that you're most likely to talk about with friends and family. So my wife and I installed an induction stove last fall and it's definitely been the biggest conversation starter about what electrification is.
David Roberts
Well, it's hard to use one and not become an evangelist. Right. Because they friggin rule.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, they're amazing. They're incredible. Yeah, so, induction stove, I think I really like that project just because you don't really talk to people about what type of water heater you just bought, but when your friends come over for dinner and you get to show them this amazing technology, it gets more people on the electrification train.
David Roberts
And then there's also the spiritual satisfaction of cutting the gas connection to your home. I don't know that that's like additional savings of any kind, but maybe it's additional satisfaction.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, well, that actually can be huge savings depending on where you live because certain places have a really high fixed charge for just being connected to the gas network. So in some places, you can save over $500 a year just by getting rid of that final gas appliance and cutting the cord with the — or, I guess, cutting the pipe — with the gas network.
David Roberts
Cutting the pipe. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I didn't know that. So, there is reason to sort of get after the dryer. And what else is there? The dryer, the stove — are there other little things?
Cora Wyent
That's all? Yeah, just the main four: heat pump, heat pump water heater, dryer, stove.
David Roberts
Right, right, right. And you say to not do solar, rooftop solar, until you've electrified. What's the sort of rationale? What's the thinking there?
Cora Wyent
Well, most solar companies will size your solar array based on your electricity usage over the last year. It would be possible to sort of model out your electrified usage and then size it based on what your future post-electrification usage will be. I don't know of any companies doing that yet. So, in order to get really an accurate picture of what your electricity consumption looks like over a year after you've electrified everything, it's important to sort of wait to do solar. You can also always add more panels. That's an option, too, but can be more of a hassle that way.
David Roberts
Right. So this is just about, right-sizing your system.
Cora Wyent
Exactly.
David Roberts
Do we know, actually, we're running out of time, I need to get to renters, but just a few more quick questions. Do we know, are electrified homes worth more? Like, is there a boost at all to your home value for doing this, or do we have any documentation of that?
Cora Wyent
Yeah, there was just a study that came out around how much heat pumps increase home value, and I think it was 4% — I'll have to double-check and get back before I quote that number. But, yeah, heat pumps, rooftop solar, these technologies definitely do increase home value. And there have also been some studies on sort of the consumption, basically energy efficiency and how much each gain in energy efficiency can increase home value. So there's definitely an argument to be made that these technologies increase your home value, too.
David Roberts
Yeah. And it seems like this is an area — this is something I've thought a lot about — it seems like an area where advocates could get in and try to poke at the real estate industry to be a little bit better about this. This seems like something that it would be cool if you could see it on Redfin or whatever, if you could search for electrified or houses with no gas hookup or something, like, have the real estate people talk it up a little bit more.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, I think that would be an awesome opportunity for advocacy. And we have heard anecdotally of some realtors who are saying that people are asking about these things, asking about efficient, electrified or renewable powered homes. But I would love to see more of that.
David Roberts
Yeah. And this probably is about me being in a bubble, but at this point, I do a lot of Zillow porn, as they call it, just flipping through houses on Zillow and looking at them. And I've gotten to the point now where I'm like "Oh, cool house. Cool house. What, a gas stove?! Gross. How dare you. Why would you put one of those in there?" To me, it's become this sort of negative signal. I sort of wonder, because it was a sign of affluence and sort of upscaleness not very long ago. It's very fascinating to be in the middle of that, flipping over on its head. It's very different in different places, I think.
Cora Wyent
Definitely. Yeah. I'm hopeful that people will start seeking out induction stoves like they used to seek out gas stoves.
David Roberts
Yeah, okay. Well, I apologize to renters because even though we said we were going to have time, I've left very little time. But let's talk about renters. So I'm sure you get this question, too. All the time. I get it all the time, which is like, "How do I charge my EV? I don't have a garage. I'm on street parking. How do I electrify? I don't own my place. I don't pay my utilities," et cetera, et cetera. There's all these sort of — renters, I think, in this conversation feel a little bit helpless. But you have a whole part of your website, a whole page on your website that is for renters trying to help them not feel helpless.
So let's talk through a little bit of what renters can do.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, homes.rewiringamerica.org and we've got a lot of tools for renters on what they can do. I think one category of things is as a renter, there's not much that's really in your control in terms of what type of water heater you have or what type of heating and cooling you have. One thing that you can do is get a portable induction cooktop. We had one of these for about a year before we got our induction stove and absolutely loved it. You can get them for $100 or less on Amazon. And this is a way to really displace a lot of your gas usage during cooking and make your indoor air quality a lot safer as a renter — and it's something that you do have control over.
One other thing to consider that's within your control is a portable heat pump or a window unit heat pump. The major caveat here is if your landlord is currently paying your heating bill, like I think at the place that I last rented, my landlord paid my gas bill, but I paid my electric bill. You just want to make sure that you're not going to make your own bills go up. So if your landlord pays your gas bill and you then install an electric heat pump, you're going to pay more on your electricity bills. So if you already pay your own utilities or if you already pay your own heating and cooling, then a portable heat pump can be a really good option and you can take it with you from place to place and displace a lot of that gas or fossil fuel usage.
David Roberts
Oh, interesting. So those just are like window AC units. I mean, they look basically like the window AC units you see in big high rises residential towers and stuff.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, there are some that look just like normal window ACs and there are some that look even fancier. There's some that are kind of a U-shaped model that hang over your windowsill that are really cool. I think Gradient is the company that makes those. And then there are some that look like a portable space heater, too, where you have kind of like a tube that you stick out the window and then it sort of sits on your floor and does the heating and cooling from there.
David Roberts
Interesting. That seems like an area where there's going to be some innovation here as the market picks up sort of weird intermediary stages of heat pumpness?
Cora Wyent
Definitely.
David Roberts
All right, so as a renter, you can get a portable induction, you can get your window heat pump. What about in terms of are there organizations or is there advocacy or is there some lever you can pull to try to influence your landlord? I know probably a lot of renters out there just laugh when they hear that, but yeah, are there things you can do?
Cora Wyent
It might be an uphill battle, but if you have a friendly landlord, we do actually have a really good guide for talking to your landlord about electrification on our website, and you can put it in terms that the landlord will be interested in about sort of saving them money, about all the incentives that are available to them. So definitely recommend checking out that article around talking to your landlord. We've even got like a sample email in there that you can use to email your landlord and share some details around electrification and why it's important and most importantly, why it's in their best interest. And then I think advocacy is really important for homeowners and renters alike.
So as we've talked about, if we just have these early adopters who are climate motivated, electrifying, that's really not enough, and it's not what we need from a climate perspective. It's not equitable, it's not fair. So I think there's a lot that needs to be done in state and local policy and would encourage both renters and homeowners to see what's happening in their city or in their state and advocate for better sort of rebates, incentives and other programs around electrification. And one thing in particular that I'm excited about, there are direct install programs where for low income households, a state or local community based organization will sort of take care of all of these details that we've talked through and do the full install at no cost to a low income household.
David Roberts
Yeah, because this is kind of something I wanted to throw in. When people like us, I think, talk about call three contractors and do the calculation on your volts and all this stuff like that. If you're living paycheck to paycheck and worried about feeding your kids, it's the time penalty that almost is worse than the financial penalty on these things. You just do not have time to mess around with this kind of thing.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's where these direct install programs are really powerful because it's just full service, everything is paid for, everything sort of gets installed and taken care of. And I think it's a really good way also to sort of invest in sort of a housing stock and populations that have been systemically underinvested in too.
David Roberts
Yeah, you get the interior air quality benefits, get the lower bills over time, you probably are saving insofar as the state is supporting those people in those places. Probably the state saves money over time by doing it.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, and a lot of folks who don't have the money to afford these upfront investments in electrification also don't have the upfront money to even replace their own air conditioner or home heating system when it goes out. So they might be getting by with space heaters or window units, and space heaters are just a really expensive way to heat your home. So getting these electrification technologies in all households will sort of bring us all the benefits and bill savings.
David Roberts
Yeah, this might be a whole different pod, but it just occurred to me: If I'm the owner of like a, call it like a ten-unit apartment building or a condo building. Are most of the considerations that we've been talking about for this past hour roughly the same? It's pretty much the same type of calculations you're making, right?
Cora Wyent
Yeah, exactly. I think for small apartment buildings or condo buildings, the considerations are the same. The place where it starts to get different is if you're talking about larger multi story apartment buildings that might have like a central heating system, like a big boiler that serves all the units, and then the technologies and considerations are a bit different. But for small apartment and condos, a lot of it is similar.
David Roberts
Yeah, this is a future Volts episode is sort of big industrial heat pumps that can work in big commercial buildings or big multi unit buildings.
Cora Wyent
Oh yeah, that would be very cool.
David Roberts
They are real. They exist. Cora, this has been so interesting and fascinating. And, you know, I encourage listeners, again, if you have been thinking about any of this, or even if you're just curious, it's really easy to go to this personal electrification planner and just sort of plug in your zip code and just kind of see what you're paying for electricity, how much you could save, what the prices are around, things like that. You can get a really good sense of kind of where you are in this journey, if nothing else, pretty easily. And it's fun to mess around with.
So thanks for coming on and walking us through it, and thanks to Rewiring America for being on this incredibly important task that you guys have set yourself.
Cora Wyent
Yeah, of course. Thanks so much. This has been really fun.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free, powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volts subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf. So that I can continue doing this work. Thank you so much and I'll see you next time.
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