Electrification: Is Complete–We No Longer Burn Stuff

We’ve completed our journey to electrification that began shortly after Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in mid 2022. We no longer “burn stuff” that is, we’re no longer using fossil fuels in our home.[1]

In response to incentives in the IRA and to those offered by the state of California, we now use heat pumps to heat and cool our home, heat our water, and dry our clothes. And we use an induction stove top to cook our food.

It hasn’t been easy and it wasn’t cheap, but it is eminently doable if one is determined enough. It took far longer than we first imagined, in large part due to California’s bureaucratic delays in implementing the IRA program. Unfortunately, the state’s delays and the anti-efficiency ideology of the new regime in Washington, DC means few if any can take advantage of the federal rebates that were once offered.

Heehra Phase Ii Table — IRA Federal Rebates.

Soon after the IRA passed, we anticipated that the Home Electrification and Appliance Rebate (HEEHRA) Program would save us from $7,000 to $14,000 on our electrification journey. That did not come to pass. The California Energy Commission broke the program up into two phases. Phase I contained the most lucrative of the federal rebates, those for converting our home to a heat pump HVAC system.

We qualified as “moderate income” and thus the $4,000 rebate on a new HVAC system for our house. (See Electrification: Heat Pump Home Heating.) As intended by the program, our HVAC contractor took the $4,000 off the price of installing the new system. They were then reimbursed by the CEC with funds from the federal government.

However, the CEC has been glacially slow implementing Phase II of the program for the remaining appliances.[2] After waiting almost two years for the launch of the first phase, we decided to move ahead without applying for $3,000 in rebates under Phase II.

Energy Smart Homes Rebate 02 — California’s Smart-Energy Homes Rebates.

Altogether, our electrification project cost nearly $26,000 not all of which we paid out of pocket as $4,000 in federal rebates were paid directly to our HVAC contractor. We applied to and qualified for California’s Energy-Smart Homes program that paid us almost $6,000 to electrify our home. We also expect to qualify for a $2,000 federal tax credit in 2025 bringing our net cost of the project to about $14,000.

Why We “Electrified” Our Home

Our motives in doing this were twofold. First it was literally to “stop burning stuff” by eliminating our use of fossil fuels. Second, we wanted to demonstrate to others how to go about this, discover the problems others might encounter, the ways around the problems, and in general what they could expect and how much it would cost them.

We haven’t determined if “electrifying” our home makes traditional economic sense. Generally, electricity—even in California—is cheaper to use than fossil fuels. We know this from driving electric for the past decade. The appliances we installed are far more efficient than the appliances we replaced. Overall, we expect to pay less for energy in our home than we did before. Whether that is enough to offset the cost of the new appliances only time will tell.

For the past three years, fossil gas has cost us about $900 per year. Electricity for the same period has cost from $200 to $500 per year since we have solar PV providing most of our needs. To breakeven on the cost of fossil gas, we could increase our electrical consumption by nearly 2,000 kWh per year. That’s within the range of our estimate of how much more electricity we’ll need. Whether there’s sufficient monetary savings to pay down our investment in the new appliances won’t be known for some time to come.

Stay tuned. We’ll post our results as they become available.

Fossil Fuel Use in Our Home Ranked

The two principle uses for fossil fuels in our home were for transportation and home heating. Most significant was driving a gasoline-powered car. Depending upon how much we drove per year, the car consumed the equivalent of ~2,000 kWh annually. Next was home heating with fossil gas. We estimate that home heating consumed another 2,000 kWh per year. This was followed by heating hot water with fossil gas and far behind was cooking with fossil gas.

One conclusion we made was that it was far easier to replace the car with an electric vehicle than it was to replace heating or cooking with electricity. American’s are accustomed to buying cars—because nearly everyone needs a car in our culture. We know and understand car language and how the car fits within our lives. And there’s a whole industry eagerly waiting for you to walk into a showroom and sell you a car. Not so with major appliances whose key feature is their improved efficiency.

If the goal is to reduce your consumption of fossil fuels as much as you can as quick as you can, you’re best off buying an EV followed by installing a heat pump home heating system.

Electrification Series

[1] We drive electric and have been doing so for a decade now. See EV Articles by Paul Gipe for our experiences exploring California in an EV.

[2] As of this writing, the CEC has yet to implement Phase II.