I happened to catch an episode of This Old House over the weekend, and am curious how a house that had a lot of recent work done involving a gas heating system would end up getting converted to electric down the road, if ever. The question also addresses what you all think might be the path toward "converting" current gas homes to electric.
The home in question was a mid-century modern in the Northeast somewhere. Not sure what that home was doing there versus say Palm Springs, Ca. but there it was. The utility upgrade was done in 3 separate rooms in the former basement. It looked like they had installed water fed in-floor radiant heat in most of the house, since the HVAC guy showed an entire room full of PVC tubes feeding various zones in each room. Biggest deployment of that I have ever seen, in a single house. Anyway, the entire system including the hot water utilized a "super efficient" gas heater. I wouldn't have given that a second thought previously, but if we are trying to "electrify everything" then that gas fired system will eventually have to be replaced. It's not unusual for homes that last 50+ years to see a conversion (or two) in their "furnace", as you all know.
I wondered if the path forward for homes that use gas will be: 1) replace the current gas with a renewable derived gas that is delivered through the same system, so minimal equipment replacement required, and keeping the gas infrastructure in place for some number of years or 2) electricity becomes so cheap that the super efficient gas furnace is replaced with resistive (?) or some other electric powered system. The question of seasonal storage of electricity could come into play, but I wouldn't think that would be done at the single home level, if at all. That home has got to heating up a lot of water, and I believe (?) that electricity is much less efficient at doing that than gas, cost wise at least for now.
Any thoughts on which of the two might end up happening for this specific house, and for older homes in general in colder climates where gas is currently the predominant heating source?
Here in Pasadena almost all condo complexes have 100% electric already, so the "how to convert gas to electric" part of the transition isn't one of the hurdles. And I think warmer climates that only require primarily A/C will be easier to transition than colder climates.
Any pointers to research or discussions of the topic would also be appreciated.
RT
P.S. Going to post an update shortly on California's effort at hitting 33% renewable in 2020 which was legislated back in 2015.