When I converted my home from gas to electric my utility bills nearly doubled
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Using a heat pump in cooling + heating mode is not a drop-in replacement for a furnace like the author seems to imply, it's also an AC that comes along for the ride!
heating + cooling > heating alone
That said, its also important to point out, that the author is in Berkeley, and electricity costs in California are among the highest in the US.
Three major utilities service pretty much the whole state (1/8th of the US population). Regulating them has been a major failure of the California democratic party controlled state governance. The CPUC is a major rant rabbit hole, industry capture is rampant.
Disclaimer: I say this being registered "no party" and considering myself left of most people.
Gavin's administration in particular has been extremely industry friendly, with a steady reduction in citizen/consumer protection in the face of ever increasing utility profits.
Ever since first seeing this article yesterday, I felt it was clickbait. This outcome was 100% known in advance. It's not new news in California that electric heating is more expensive than gas heating.
The conversion to heat pump was a great first step (and should also include increased insulation). The next step is battery and solar, in that order. Part of the affordability erosion in CA is the removal of net-metering credit for solar generation.
A battery that charges _from_the_utility_ off-peak, and is available to consume during the day, pays for itself faster than solar now! But adding solar in addition to the battery, completes an investment that pays for itself in about 1/2 to 1/3 of it's service lifetime.
I know several modest sized homes that generate all of their own electricity consumption, including charging EVs. In comparison, I don't know anyone with their own on-site natural gas production.
Electrification is the straightest path to energy independence, and from utility price gouging.
Rejection of electrification by the US right is one of it's biggest self-inflicted wounds (except for those that own petroleum companies).
Same thing with solar panels, people will drop 40k on solar just to save $200 a month on electricity when insulation would have reaped half the savings for 1/10th the price.
People just like buying gadgets.
As sibling notes, it can be invasive and disruptive vs. just replacing some appliances in a few days, but it's still more cost effective (and will allow your eventual replacement HVAC system to be sized smaller, netting additional savings when you do that).
My all time high electric bill so far was ~$220 for a 2500sqft house when it was 110+ outside for most of the month and I was WFH and keeping the downstairs around 70.
I was really nerding out about solar panels and home batteries for a while and desperate to justify that toy, but I would barely break even before they failed or I needed a new roof. Start with insulation, it’s CHEAP compared to high tech options.
Same with 10kWp of solar. $4k in gear plus $700 for electrician. Easily half of paying someone else for full solution.
(Prices converted from nzd to usd).
Though going from no A/C usage to frequent A/C usage as the author did is likely going to up your overall bill just about anywhere.
What a crazy world we live in. Instead of finally upgrading your electrical system to something that can handle the 5kW needed for a high end induction stove, you buy a device with a battery that will probably need to be replaced in a few years and might turn out to be a huge fire risk.
How is that cheaper than running a few meters of copper cable?
Unions
If unions were the problem, you'd see a lot of individual contractors.
- Installing a battery powered stove is probably less than 30 minutes of work, and the electrician selling it makes a lot of money from the sale of the expensive stove.
- Running a new cable from the kitchen to the distribution board will probably take two hours or potentially even more if there is a lot of furniture in the way, but the electrician will make a lot less money because they can't sell the expensive device.
So I think the answer is that battery powered stoves are just a more profitable product to sell, so that's why electricians push them instead of traditional devices.
And that’s compared to my electricity that’s much cheaper than in most states. My all time high electric bill was ~$220 for a 2500sqft house and that’s when it was 110+ outside for most of the month and I was WFH and keeping the downstairs around 70. I wanted to get solar panels, but couldn’t justify it because I would barely break even before they failed or I needed a new roof.
I do eventually want to switch to electric because I don’t like explosive gasses and their byproducts in my house, but in economic terms electric is a fail.
It worked great once it got going though. I don't think I'm going to miss gas.
Not by a lot. At least here in Sweden the cheapest induction stovetop from a brand I somewhat trust is maybe $150 more than the cheapest ceramic stovetop from a similar brand. Once you move into the midrange, the price difference is virtually gone. As to cookware, unless you use mostly copper cookware, I found that virtually all my pots and pans were compatible.
If you're thinking about induction and want to test your pans, grab a magnet and touch it to the bottom of your pan. If it sticks, the pan will work.
All of our pots except one was compatible. You will only have problems with very cheap aluminum pans, or with some high end copper cookware. I don't know anyone who has copper cookware, so the problem for most people are their cheap aluminium pans and pots. You should probably replace them anyway. Most stainless steel, all cast iron or forged iron pans are compatible with induction.
Induction is pretty spectacular. It's a bit different than gas, but a good induction hob is both more powerful than gas on the high end, and much better at controlling temperature at the low end.
The only thing I dislike are the touch controls on most units, but I guess you can't have it all.
My neighbour has the same panels but never looks at the output. I told him to check them and he was shocked. How many others are there they simply don't check the output and keep spouting that panels have multi decade lifetimes.
It was so significant that one of the 2 strings, 6 panels each, simply shut off especially during peak hours because the inverter's minimal input voltage wasn't met (during peak voltage usually drops due to negative heat coefficient). 1 simply was broken and was bypassed by the.. bypass diodes i guess. And another was at a third. But again, the lower voltage was a much bigger problem than the input.
problem is, you can only measure this very well under load. So taking your multi meter to the place of sale might not say that much. `It might though for the really broken ones.
That said, I've heard gas costs have also increased recently, so I'd likely be seeing higher costs if we hadn't converted.
I didn’t get to the part where (presumably, as they mention cooking with gas) they replace the stove, couldn’t take the poor financial choices and waste any more.
Present a story (if it’s even true) of an outlandish situation as if it representative of something, but not outright saying it, leaving it to the reader to feel outrage, or schadenfreude, and then they send it to their friends to gawk at the idiocy, etc.
A common one is “we earn $300k per year but are only middle class and can’t afford to save for retirement”.
Well, they would, just fewer of 'em. And they'd generally be run for entertainment, rather than in pursuit of the owner's domestic agenda.