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Electrify Everything
- Thread starter ItsNotAboutTheMoney
- Start date
Yo @vbaker , if you really wrecked a couple Tesla's per your signature, should you really be behind the wheel of a Case 580B?
RT
My accident: "
And my wife's was two days later, my car was out of service and she was summoning hers into the garage when the 4G dropped, it ran into the support for the garage shelves and dropped them on the hood, dented the bumper too. She is still driving it around like that.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
How and why to electrify everything
Rewiring America estimates that the average U.S. household can save $1,800 a year in utility costs by switching to all electric, plus the IRA offers added incentives.
pv-magazine-usa.com
Your guide to the Inflation Reduction Act
The Inflation Reduction Act is full of incentives to help you and your family go electric. But there’s a lot to explore and understand, from electric appliances you may not even know about yet to the best way to structure your electric journey for maximum savings. Our Go Electric guide provides...
www.rewiringamerica.org
AOC Tweet about in response to somebody tweeting about gas stoves.
Not sure if intentionally funny.:
Not sure if intentionally funny.:
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
Mostly just a funny skit but it reminded me a little how I feel about people still burning fossil fuels for energy in 2023 for some insane reason.
Just 'STOP IT!' The 'need' for fossil fuel use outside heavy industry is more phycological than practical now.
Just 'STOP IT!' The 'need' for fossil fuel use outside heavy industry is more phycological than practical now.
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California's war on gas appliances worries me. Not because I have a religious preference for cooking and heating with gas but because my home isn't wired for electric appliances and it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to retrofit it. I have no 240V hookups for my clothes dryer or my stove/oven. Gas only. Also, it's a townhome/condo, so any retrofit project would require HOA board approval and special assessments for a ~250 unit complex. It ain't gonna happen. Hopefully I won't need to start importing appliances from Nevada.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
There are 120v options for ovens, stoves and dryers. With all the rebates and incentives out now plus the insane price of gas in CA you could probably SAVE money monthly with an equity loan.
It would be interesting to get a quote from an electrician. If they can isolate a single 120v outlet I think there are code compliant ways to upgrade a NEMA 5-15 to a NEMA 6-20 which is 240v. That would broaden you appliance options.
Just from a seismic safety perspective I think it makes A LOT of sense to not have a flammable gas piped into buildings. Especially in a region as temperate as southern CA.
Show me an electric stove/range which operates off a standard 120V/15A or 120V/20A circuit. That's my only option. Any other choice would involve HOA approval since this is a condo.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
Lots of options on Amazon. Just search '120v induction cooktop'
Costco has had kits on the past too.
I don't think you're following what I'm saying. A standalone induction cooktop is not an option. It would need to be a replacement for a typical 30" range. Otherwise you'd have to explain to 250 homeowners why they need to completely remodel their kitchen with only a small cooktop and no oven. Maybe a small toaster oven but without enough power to run it at the same time as the cooktop without tripping the breaker.
I see a few 120V options for ranges at Best Buy but if you look carefully at the specs, they require a 40A circuit breaker. This makes sense because a standard 20A circuit can't provide nearly enough juice to run an oven and a couple burners at the same time.
EDIT: Furthermore, the price of electricity in California is closely tied to the price of natural gas since that's how most of it is generated, especially during the peak hours of 4pm-9pm when the sun sets, solar goes away and we all start cooking dinner.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
If they want to have a 30" range with an oven that's probably what's going to be required. Lots of tax credits and such to help. I switched from a gas range/oven to induction ~6 years ago. It's been fine.
The price of gas has increased ~300% in the past ~12 months. Peak electric rates have not increased anywhere near that much.
You don't understand the scope of what's required to retrofit my community for 240V appliances. For some background, check out the thread I created here four years ago when trying to figure out how to install an L2 charger in my garage:
I live in a condo. The main breaker is only 70A. Now what? [Resolved]
Hey all, New guy here. I take delivery of my Model 3 in about a week. I live in an attached townhome. I have my own, private attached two car garage. I was gearing up to have a NEMA 14-50 outlet installed but unfortunately I discovered the main breaker feeding my unit is only 70A. Other...
teslamotorsclub.com
Every unit would need their panels upgraded from 70A to 100A+. It would involve replacement of every main circuit breaker panel, every subpanel in everyone's garage, running new undergound conduits between the main panels and the garage subpanels, plus huge amounts of interior remodeling (electric wire routing, drywall/paint repairs, etc). Assuming you could actually get every homeowner in a 250 unit development on board, it would easily cost over $10,000 in special assessments per condo to do all of this. Tax credits will NEVER come close to covering this cost.
IMHO, this is stupid government bureaucracy run amok. CARB achieved their Final Solution with respect to passenger cars (complete ban on new ICE vehicles sold by 2035). They need to justify their continued existence so now they're looking elsewhere.
Besides, gas prices may have risen faster than electricity but it won't take long for electricity to catch up. Have you seen SDGE's new rates? Peak 4p-9p electricity price this upcoming summer will be over $0.80/kWh for some plans!
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
it's not like gas service will be cutoff tomorrow but it does need to happen at some point. Hopefully in the next ~10 years. Do you really deny the insanity of methane being piped into a residence in a place as warm and earthquake prone as CA? The pro/con doesn't come close to playing out. There are lot of clever solutions being introduced to address this issue. Rheem even has a water heater that plugs into a normal 120v outlet now.
The first step is to amend the building code to stop digging the hole deeper and ban new gas service. That's easy and probably even saves money. A small ~5kWh battery would offset most of those higher peak rates.
This is where you are wrong. Cutting off gas NEVER needs to happen. Not unless you and everyone else who deem it insane to pipe gas into a residence want to completely subsidize the cost to retrofit my community's electric infrastructure.
Most months out of the year I never run the heat. Our gas water heater is efficient. We cook like normal people do. And until the geopolitical situation of this year presented itself, a typical monthly gas bill for us was under $15.
You greatly trivialize the problem. "Oh, just add a 5 kWh battery." Yeah, getting approval from my HOA to install one will be a piece of cake. "Oh, just rip out your stove and remodel your entire kitchen with an induction cooktop. Think of all the extra cabinet space you'll have! You won't miss having a fully functional oven, I promise. Oh BRB, I have to go check on that chicken I'm roasting..."
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
That's the plan already. To subsidize the cost to retrofit with electric infrastructure. So piping an explosive gas into a residence isn't insane? .... really?
HEEHRA: $14,000 to upgrade homes
Burning 1kWh of methane to add 0.9kWh of heat to water is not efficient. Not compared to a heat pump that can use 1kWh of electricity to add 4 kWh of heat. Add to that the fact that the 1kWh used can be solar energy that would have been wasted meaning the ultimate energy cost can be 0.
It's not just the gas burned but the fugitive emissions. Even when they're off gas ranges leak methane. WHEN. WHEN there's a 7.0 earthquake and the gas infrastructure requires 100s of millions or billions of dollars to rebuild. Will that really be worth it? Might as well start chipping away at the problem now.
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Mankind has been piping gas into homes for almost a century. If it was as dangerous as you suggest, we would have figured out decades ago it was a bad idea and stopped doing so forever. In fact, I think we've given it a go already: The house my parents live in was built in 1968. It still has the "Medallion Home" doorbell on the front, proudly proclaiming it was an all electric home (although the furnace and water heater use gas; not sure how that happened). Yet somehow when my home was built twenty years later in 1988, it was judged wiser to avoid electric appliances and use natural gas for everything. Something must have happened between the late '60s and mid '80s to change society's opinion on the benefits of electricity. Or are you suggesting we were all completely insane during this time period and it was a vast conspiracy between the gas utilities and home builders?
Also, you're moving the goalposts. You cannot use a heat pump to boil a pot of water in the kithen. You cannot use a heat pump to roast a turkey or bake a cake. And solar energy cannot be used at all during peak demand periods after the sun sets without also using expensive batteries, and the manufacturing of batteries carries an environmental cost which you cannot deny.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
If that was a persuasive argument there would still be indoor smoking. How long did we tolerate that for?
Heat pump for heating water/air. Induction and convection for cooking. Plenty of all electric homes that do just fine. When used for peak shaving the environmental cost of batteries is paid back in a few years if not months.
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