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Don’t forget to include the natural gas utility distribution costs when calculating any potential financial benefit when looking to switch to fully electric. Yo

Don’t forget to include the natural gas utility distribution costs when calculating any potential financial benefit when looking to switch to fully electric. Your not only getting rid of the natural gas Energy costs, but since your in Ohio, I’d wager your actual Distribution costs for your natural gas supply is actually greater than your actual Natural gas energy Supply costs. Reducing to simply one utility distribution cost will help substantially when looking at long term financial viability

Brian_K_White 6d ago
Gas is an important redundancy that will be a huge loss to give up. Not merely the 2nd source of energy, but in a totally different form with totally different pros, cons, and failure modes. It's exceedingly useful that you can run all your gas appliances at full power at the same time without needing the ridiculous amount of copper or aluminum it takes to carry the same load in electric form, and do all that while the power is out, because the power is up on poles and the gas pipe is in the ground. Now imagine trying to replace the redundancy by ups or generator. The amount of copper, electronics, and batteries needed to make a ups that can run your furnace or ac and your stove and hot water is just ridiculous. Most people simply won't have it. Wildly impractical luxury. It's kind of ridiculous to require $billion chip fab infrastructure to make heat, and have your stove be this delicate piece of complex electronics and the burners are all these fixed little circles that don't heat pans evenly because it costs more money to make the fancy burners large enough to cover a whole pan. Meanwhile a gas stove is just a couple chunks of dead metal and almost no moving parts and doesn't even need electricity let alone any electronics. That is a huge practicality and robustness win. And heats pans more evenly because the flame does not have this weird artficially sharp 0%/100% border. Even a small simmer burner heats a large pan more evenly because although there is a hotter spot in the center, the flame still spreads out and travels along the pan and up the sides no matter what size it is. It doesn't care what size the pot or pan is, and also doesn't care what the pan is made out of. That is huge. Electronics and heat are not natural together. It's a constant fight to try to prevent heat from killing elctronics. Every day that one of the thousands of electronic parts of an inductive range sittng above a hot oven and below a hot pan doesn't fail is a lucky day. It's not just reliable by default by just being simple. It's not a slam dunk all-upsides trade-off.
- nickpeterson 6d ago
  I appreciate the argument, but I can’t make my own natural gas. I was considering all electric with a backup wood burner insert in my chimney. I’ll probably end up with vehicle2home as a backup and solar panels, maybe not in that order. Natural gas is extremely good at generating heat, and I completely understand why people prefer it.
- Aboutplants 6d ago
  But you pay $100 a month just for the ability to use the gas that you will then pay for. If you want fossil redundancy then go with a propane generator, sits on property as energy storage, available for use when needed. You’re also in at a relatively decent price, for a backup system. That coupled with batteries and you eliminate that Distribution cost double up by having to be served by two utilities. Payback is under 2-5 years for that backup, when you account for the distribution cost elimination
  - brianaker 6d ago
    A propane generator will not buy you much time or output. If the home owner has natural gas? They should could get a natural gas generator, that way they have a continuous supply of fuel if the grid fails. Grid and gas failure? That happens only after a significant event, like a major earthquake. Not much you can do about those sorts of events. ( The person lives in Ohio… so not as much concern. ) Cost-wise? They would be better with a dual fuel system for heating. They live in Ohio, they probably have AC so moving to dual fuel when the AC system needs to be replaced is the smarter option.
    - nickpeterson 6d ago
      A friend of mine just got a generac generator, fully installed it was 17k. Pretty steep, not to mention the gas bill with any significant outage will be huge.
- tredre3 6d ago
  What you say is all well and good, but the reality is that most gas appliances do not work without electricity. Your stove is about the only thing that can work on gas alone. The furnace, the water heater, the dryer, they all need electricity. So you need backup electricity either way. And in the case of a furnace it's still a significant draw due to fans and/or pumps so to get multi-day resilience you need a big battery. Less than if it was a heatpump, sure, but this battery and inverter system will use all the same amount of electronics either way.

Brian_K_White 6d ago

Gas is an important redundancy that will be a huge loss to give up. Not merely the 2nd source of energy, but in a totally different form with totally different pros, cons, and failure modes. It's exceedingly useful that you can run all your gas appliances at full power at the same time without needing the ridiculous amount of copper or aluminum it takes to carry the same load in electric form, and do all that while the power is out, because the power is up on poles and the gas pipe is in the ground. Now imagine trying to replace the redundancy by ups or generator. The amount of copper, electronics, and batteries needed to make a ups that can run your furnace or ac and your stove and hot water is just ridiculous. Most people simply won't have it. Wildly impractical luxury. It's kind of ridiculous to require $billion chip fab infrastructure to make heat, and have your stove be this delicate piece of complex electronics and the burners are all these fixed little circles that don't heat pans evenly because it costs more money to make the fancy burners large enough to cover a whole pan. Meanwhile a gas stove is just a couple chunks of dead metal and almost no moving parts and doesn't even need electricity let alone any electronics. That is a huge practicality and robustness win. And heats pans more evenly because the flame does not have this weird artficially sharp 0%/100% border. Even a small simmer burner heats a large pan more evenly because although there is a hotter spot in the center, the flame still spreads out and travels along the pan and up the sides no matter what size it is. It doesn't care what size the pot or pan is, and also doesn't care what the pan is made out of. That is huge. Electronics and heat are not natural together. It's a constant fight to try to prevent heat from killing elctronics. Every day that one of the thousands of electronic parts of an inductive range sittng above a hot oven and below a hot pan doesn't fail is a lucky day. It's not just reliable by default by just being simple. It's not a slam dunk all-upsides trade-off.

nickpeterson 6d ago
I appreciate the argument, but I can’t make my own natural gas. I was considering all electric with a backup wood burner insert in my chimney. I’ll probably end up with vehicle2home as a backup and solar panels, maybe not in that order. Natural gas is extremely good at generating heat, and I completely understand why people prefer it.
Aboutplants 6d ago
But you pay $100 a month just for the ability to use the gas that you will then pay for. If you want fossil redundancy then go with a propane generator, sits on property as energy storage, available for use when needed. You’re also in at a relatively decent price, for a backup system. That coupled with batteries and you eliminate that Distribution cost double up by having to be served by two utilities. Payback is under 2-5 years for that backup, when you account for the distribution cost elimination
- brianaker 6d ago
  A propane generator will not buy you much time or output. If the home owner has natural gas? They should could get a natural gas generator, that way they have a continuous supply of fuel if the grid fails. Grid and gas failure? That happens only after a significant event, like a major earthquake. Not much you can do about those sorts of events. ( The person lives in Ohio… so not as much concern. ) Cost-wise? They would be better with a dual fuel system for heating. They live in Ohio, they probably have AC so moving to dual fuel when the AC system needs to be replaced is the smarter option.
  - nickpeterson 6d ago
    A friend of mine just got a generac generator, fully installed it was 17k. Pretty steep, not to mention the gas bill with any significant outage will be huge.
tredre3 6d ago
What you say is all well and good, but the reality is that most gas appliances do not work without electricity. Your stove is about the only thing that can work on gas alone. The furnace, the water heater, the dryer, they all need electricity. So you need backup electricity either way. And in the case of a furnace it's still a significant draw due to fans and/or pumps so to get multi-day resilience you need a big battery. Less than if it was a heatpump, sure, but this battery and inverter system will use all the same amount of electronics either way.