How We Electrified Our House
Chris and I successfully converted our house to all electric, and we are so happy we did. 🙌 Here’s how it happened.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO ELECTRIFY A HOUSE?
In a nutshell, electrification is when a building is converted to run 100% off electricity. This is typically done by removing natural gas appliances and replacing them with electric versions.
Why do this? For us, the benefits are twofold: an all-electric home is better for the environment and it’s better for our health.
It’s better for the environment because electricity can be generated from many different sources, including clean, zero-carbon energy sources (such as solar, wind, geothermal, etc.). Natural gas, on the other hand, is inherently a fossil fuel which produces carbon pollution when burned. So, for example, with an electric clothes dryer you have the option to power it via clean electricity, but with a gas clothes dryer you have no choice but to power it via fossil fuel. If we are to meaningfully tackle climate change, our society must minimize carbon pollution, and a huge part of that is electrifying buildings to run off clean energy.
It’s better for your health because natural gas appliances involve combustion — setting things on fire — and any time something burns, it gives off harmful air pollution such as carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and particulate matter (a.k.a. soot). An electrified house has no combustion appliances, which means zero flames and healthier air to breathe.
For these reasons, Chris and I decided pretty early on we wanted to electrify our house. But how to go about doing it? Here’s what we did (a grossly oversimplified summary):
Step 1: Install solar panels with battery storage so we have a clean source of electricity 24/7.
Step 2: Replace all gas appliances with electric ones.
Step 3: Turn off the gas!
SOLAR PANELS + BATTERY
NOTE: It is not necessary to get solar panels to run your home off clean energy. Many utilities offer green power options where you can pay a little extra for your electricity to come from renewable sources. This can be a much more affordable way to power your home with clean energy and reduce carbon emissions. If you are a renter or live in a multifamily building with an HOA or are in some other situation that makes adding solar and storage difficult, or if you just don’t have the cash on hand to go solar + storage, electrifying your appliances and buying clean grid power can be a great option.
For us, solar panels were a pretty big piece of the puzzle. An electrified building that runs off dirty electricity (sourced primarily from coal, for example) may create even more carbon pollution than one that has gas appliances. Having solar panels ensures that our home has a reliable source of clean electricity.
Putting solar panels on our roof was one of the first things we did as part of our house renovation project. You can read more about it on this earlier blog post.
The sun doesn’t always shine, though. At night, our home used electricity from the grid, which included fossil fuel-generated electricity. And whenever there were power outages (which can happen pretty frequently in CA during wildfire season), our house went dark like everybody else — and blackouts are especially bad for an all-electric home because NOTHING works. No cooking, no hot water, nothing.
For these reasons, we decided to get a battery for our solar panels: a Tesla Powerwall.
The Powerwall stores the electricity from our solar panels so our house can run off solar energy 24/7, even at night. Since the house is efficient enough to run completely off our solar panels (we don’t need to buy electricity from the grid), that makes it a zero net energy home! It’s pretty neat to pay $0 for energy bills.
Did you know electricity prices change throughout the day? When there’s a lot of demand (e.g. in the early evening when everyone is cooking dinner and running their AC), it’s really expensive for utilities — and therefore you — to buy power. When there’s little demand (e.g. in the middle of the night), power is cheap for utilities (and you). This is called time of use pricing. Since we have a battery, we use it as an opportunity to both reduce the grid’s carbon emissions and — by buying energy low and selling it high — make some money to reduce the payback period for the equipment.
Another huge benefit is that when there’s a power outage, the battery kicks in and keeps our lights on and appliances running. Although the Powerwall doesn’t back up our entire house, it does cover our most essential circuits, including the air conditioner/heat, water heater, refrigerator, stove, and most lights.
We purchased our Powerwall at the end of 2020. We were able to get a federal tax credit as well as a rebate from the state of California. The final price tag (after incentives) was about $7,600.
REPLACING GAS APPLIANCES
Our house (built in the 1960s) originally had the following natural gas appliances:
Furnace
Stove
Water heater
Clothes dryer
Fireplace
We killed the fireplace. Everything else we replaced.
Furnace/Heat
We took out the old, loud gas furnace and replaced it — along with the old AC — with a super efficient mini split heat pump (which does both cooling and heating). Read all about it here.
The mini split system was by the far the most expensive appliance of the bunch. The machines themselves — one outdoor unit (pictured above), plus two indoor units (one ductless and one ducted) — were about $6,000, and materials for installation (e.g. ducts, wires, etc.) cost about $3,000. Admittedly, this is a huge chunk of change. But to be fair, the mini split replaces our central heat AND air conditioning, and it’s a complex whole-house system — unlike a more simple, standalone appliance like a stove. So, it’s not too surprising that it costs a large sum of money. (P.S. Chris installed the system himself, otherwise it probably would have cost another $10,000 or so to hire a professional installer.)
Stove
Good-bye, gas range. Hello, induction cooktop and convection oven! We made the switch during our DIY kitchen remodel.
I’ve heard that some people are hesitant to go all electric because they “love cooking with gas.” This is a valid concern if your only experience with electric cooktops are the electric resistance ones (with glowing coils) that are super slow to heat up and cool off. But there are other ways to cook with electricity — like with induction technology! Induction is way better than electric resistance and, in our opinion, superior to gas.
Induction cooktops use magnetism (not open flames) to heat the pot or pan directly. It’s more efficient, powerful, precise, and safe. There isn’t a bunch of wasted heat radiating everywhere, which conserves energy and also helps keep the kitchen from getting too hot in the summer. Boiling water using induction is so fast, I’m often caught off guard (even now). When the cooking power is adjusted up or down, there’s no lag and the response is almost instantaneous.
It’s safer, too: there’s no risk of things catching on fire (because there is no fire), there’s no flame-related air pollution, and the surface of the cooktop (besides the part directly touching the pan) doesn’t get hot, so you’re less likely to get burned — a big plus for us with a curious toddler in the house who loves to climb. Also, because the surface doesn’t get super hot, there’s no burnt-on crud to have to clean off.
One downside of induction is that it only works with pots and pans that have iron in them (i.e. those you can stick a magnet onto). So materials like aluminum won’t work on induction cooktops. Cast iron, on the other hand, works very well, and happens to be our pot/pan material of choice — so fortunately Chris and I haven’t needed to sacrifice much in this regard.
P.S. While our induction range cost a couple thousand dollars, there are portable induction cooktops that cost as low as $50-75.
As for the oven, we went with convection. This is basically a standard electric resistance oven with a fan to blow the heat around to improve energy efficiency and to bake things more evenly. We bake bread on a regular basis and this oven has worked really well for us.
Water Heater
We replaced our gas water heater with a heat pump water heater. Here’s Chris opening the box for the first time and admiring the thing:
A heat pump is basically like a refrigerator running backwards — instead of cooling things down, it heats things up. It pulls heat from the surrounding air, so it’s extremely energy efficient. In fact, our heat pump water heater is 350% efficient (producing more energy than it uses). In comparison, our old gas water heater was about 60% efficient.
One bonus of a heat pump water heater is that it spits out cold air when it runs — which is really nice during summertime since it cools down the hot garage.
Clothes Dryer
The last gas appliance we swapped out was our clothes dryer. We found an electric dryer at a ReStore that was on discount. Here’s Chris putting it in the garage (next to the fully installed heat pump water heater).
Heat pump clothes dryers use a lot less energy than standard dryers, and we often regret not getting one. Especially when we’re doing 4-5 loads of laundry a week (thanks, toddler).
Car
Should our electric car count as part of our electrification process? It’s not technically part of the house, but transportation is definitely a big slice of our carbon footprint… so, yes, I think it counts! Despite our best efforts to go car-free, we found it is unfortunately impractical to not a have a car where we live (especially with a baby). We used to have an old 1999 Honda Civic, but now we have a 2015 Nissan Leaf EV (which we purchased used in 2019). Our car is powered by the sun! We haven’t been to a gas station in a loooong time, and it feels good.
Electrical Service Panel & Wiring
To accommodate our solar panel/battery system and all our new electric appliances — some of which require high-voltage 240V circuits (e.g. induction range, heat pump water heater, EV charger) — we had to upgrade our service panel (to 200 amps) to increase capacity and also had to do quite a bit of rewiring. This is something you’ll need to consider if you are thinking about electrifying your home.
TURNING OFF THE GAS
It’s been a long time coming (about 3 years), but we’re finally at the end of our electrification journey. Look at Chris’ big grin as he shuts off our natural gas for good!
The process of canceling our natural gas account wasn’t too complicated. We called the gas company and told them we wanted to cancel. They came out to the house and closed and locked our gas valve. And then we stopped getting gas bills. Ta da! Nice.
REFLECTIONS
The Good
It was a 3-year process, but in the end we feel really good about our all-electric home. All the electric appliances perform superbly and we don’t miss the gas ones. The house is quieter (electric appliances hum rather than whoosh and rattle), the indoor air is cleaner (we’ve verified this with an air quality monitor), and our home just feels more modern and state-of-the-art.
Our solar panels power our entire house, which means we pay nothing for energy (in fact, the panels generate so much excess energy that we sell it to the power company and they pay us) and we are minimizing our contributions to climate change. Also, we like that we’re self-reliant and able to power ourselves in the event of an outage (it’s pretty wild when there’s a blackout and our house is the only one on the street with lights on). It also means we’re able to help our neighbors with essential electrical services (phone charging, etc.) until grid power returns.
It should be noted that numerous tax breaks and rebates (offered by the federal/state government, as well as utilities) are available for purchasing solar panels, battery storage, and efficient electric appliances. Many of these incentives expire, so that’s one reason we wanted to jump on the electrification train sooner than later.
The Bad
What were the challenges with going all electric? I’d say the two main challenges were 1) lack of information and 2) high cost.
There’s not a lot of knowledge or resources out there about how to electrify your home. I mean, how many people have ever heard of a heat pump? When we were trying to figure out what electric appliance options were out there, how to buy them and install them, what rebates were available, etc. we often found it difficult. We ended up having to do a lot of our own research, which was time-consuming and burdensome. For example, when we were shopping around for an induction range, we found it nearly impossible to find one in a showroom. See the bottom of this post for a list of electrification resources that we found helpful.
The other issue is cost. A lot of these electric appliances are expensive up front. To purchase and install our electric appliances — the mini split heat pump, induction range, heat pump water heater, and clothes dryer — we spent a total of around $15,000 (This is after tax breaks and rebates. And we actually saved some money by doing a lot of the installation ourselves — otherwise it would have been even more expensive). And this doesn’t include the cost of upgrading our service panel and adding high-voltage circuits to the house - another $9,000 or so. I mean, yeesh. How many people are able to spend that much money? (I recognize the irony of discussing this on a blog with the word “frugal” in the name.)
If we want more American households to go all electric (our utility in Southern California has a goal to electrify one-third of all customer buildings by 2030), we need to get information about how to do so out there in a major way — educate the public about the technologies, offer resources and guides, streamline the permitting process, make it really easy to get rebates, and so on. Utilities should especially focus on making it easier and less expensive to upgrade service panels, because it’s often a barrier to electrification for people.
In addition, the electric appliances need to be more affordable. This could be done with more abundant tax breaks and rebates. As these technologies become more widespread, the cost will likely go down even more. The electrification movement is growing and it’s very exciting. Some cities are even prohibiting natural gas hookups in new buildings.
MORE RESOURCES
I’ll close with a list of some (hopefully) helpful resources about electrification — a few are California-specific. Thanks for reading!
GreenTech Media: So, What Exactly Is Building Electrification?
Southern California Edison: Building Electrification
HowStuffWorks: How Heat Pumps Work
Good Housekeeping: The Pros and Cons of Buying an Induction Stove or Cooktop
EnergySage: The Solar Tax Credit
California: Self-Generation Incentive Program
Southern California Edison: Rebates & Incentives