Home Electrification: There's not a lot to do, and it doesn't have to be hard (Part 1) 

Appreciated!

Getting of UNnatural gas is Very important. It also leaks methane like crazy… Heat pumps are Great! Can be used with geothermal or just FTX, where it takes energy from the ventilated air.

Another snag is grid upgrade costs. Over in WA those are passed along to whoever is requesting that latest service upgrade. It’s easily another 20k for a utility company to place / upgrade a transformer in addition to any normal upgrade costs

Fire good Ughooga booga

100 amps is… 24 kW, right?! Our heat pump uses 6,5 (simple heater) plus 2,5 kW (compressor) for a 180 m2 house in rather cold climate… 1 m snow on the lawn since Xmas… -20C frequenty. With geothermal, the simple heater would almost never start. We had 20A 3-phase, around 14 kW. Upgraded to 25A, 17 kW, as we have two BEVs and a 16 kW PV array.

True. Blame builders for cutting corners and not putting in good insulation.

that's great if you never have to work on anything.

Just built my new house. A friend of mine quizzed me “What’s the cheapest heat? Insulation!”

@@astang1072 Wife and I just bought our first house, but we're already fantasizing about doing a custom build in a few years and going all out; airtight barrier, mitigating thermal barriers, insulation as far as the eye can see... it'll cost a pretty penny but will be so worth it.

​@Zac Hansen insulation is fine. Spray foam insulation on the otherhand.. .you better hope you don't need to open that wall.

Also, what happens if the company goes defunct or the standard changes? What happens when the board in the panel fails or becomes obsolete? I might put a smart distribution box downstream from my breaker box but my breakers will be old-fashioned electromechanical breakers.

this WILL REQUIRE a subscription as SOMEONE has to PAY for the "cloud" service and all the ONLINE servers ETC AND the programmers to MAINTAIN the software AND patch bugs and vulnerabilities that ANY software package will have

Well, if the panel can still be controlled manually, the software is open sourced, and it does not require the cloud to function, I would be fine with using it as they cant force you into a subscription and you aren't locked into needing an internet connection to use it.

Yup, that's why when I "smartened up" my thermostat, I went with a Honeywell EIC. It's not as slick as some of the newer stuff, but it is not phoning home and doesn't open a security hole in my WIFI and I don't have to worry about whether a company pulling the plug on a server will kill my ability to control my heat.

A lot of the problems with electrification are problems for regulation rather than for technology...and that's the problem. We don't have the political will in the USA anymore to resist business interests with government regulation, and so not only will electrification be extremely painful here, it will also come with a lot of problematic riders like subscriptions, fees, and service charges.

Rule of thumb is never use any IoT device that isn't fully open source.

Plus the number of times that an IoT company went bankrupt and then their devices became useless through lack of servers or support is a huge mark against them. Open source (if you can code anyway)

Like, say... ZigBee?

Matter will fix this in the long run.

Home Assistant is the solution in my opinion. If you are willing to get "down and dirty" you can integrate almost anything into it, from ZigBee devices to smart cars.

just came here to say basically the same that. that smart breaker panel alone costs over $3k

span panel? that's a Spanel

Perhaps it can have cost benefits if your electric price varies by time of day?

Rather just be careful not to turn-on a bunch of appliances at once. It’s common sense you don’t run a stove & dryer at the same time .

I just put a timer on the hot water heater set from 1-5 am and the same with my EV both a high load come on when I sleep and power is cheaper.

I came here to say this, but knew it my heart it had already been said.

A timestamp of 26:05 made it easier to spot since you did too good a job pinpointing the moment the exposure dropped, heh

and I thought that my laptop got into power saving mode

I was about to comment the same thing. Truly delightful. I half expected to hear a faint 50 Hz hum start too (or 60 Hz in the US I guess)

@@davidbarnes452Lol I've learned when it comes to the internet, anytime I think of something to say, it's already been said by someone else at least a year ago.

I literally just used mine

I've used one. They are very fast. But super uncommon. Large towns or small cities may only have one or two models available.

well if that blow your mind, this fact, may actually, course bran damage, your could by kitchen fringes that ran on Gas too, with flames and all that stuff that goes with gas burning?

@@zoomzabba452 uncommon really?

Yeah it made me wonder what else they can have running on gas.

Yeah -- I don't think a smart panel is necessarily the answer. It's more that we need to get on with developing standard protocols for power management control interchange, that isn't tied to AN app, or even AN company.

@@nickwallette6201 A?

@@hgpo27 Eh!

@nickwallette6201 *A company (not an)

Yeah plus it might damage your devices if they experience recurring intermittent blackout power outages

That sounds like an incredible efficiency upgrade. Taking heat from your home to heat your water and cool your home at the same time.

I believe Rheem in the US has something like that too. Very interesting product indeed

We’ve had this in Australia for years and they suck at heating water. The Instant Hot Water gas heaters work great and are very cheap because they don’t store any water in a giant tank when it’s not required.

Yeah it's a shame there's not that many of them in North America. I think LG Therma V is mostly commercial.. Taco System M is another I heard of that recently came out that might be a bit more residential. I think they're still far more expensive than generic heat pump water heaters like Rheem ProTerra and the like, but they do have more perks and likely more efficiency in the summer due to the compressor being outdoors. Edit: SpacePak apparently has some interesting A2W solutions as well.

Taiwan is so great! Great people, great heritage, and the ultimate in tech.

"other better types of housing" there fixed it for you.

Annoy your apartment owner to switch from the current option to electric, they are the ones to annoy for that task, there are also individual panels you can hang of your balcony, you would have to ask the owner for permission to use those as well though.

Credit where it is due, by merely being a multi-unit building, it is inherently more energy efficient even if you're burning stuff. Heating for example. The common areas like stairwells are ekstra air based insulation, and the smaller surface area to volume ratio means slower heat loss overall. Water heating, you lose less heat/energy to innactivity with a range of ages and occupations and lifestyles in the same building. Where in a single family home the times that one family aren't using the water it is cooling down without being used, in such a building someone else is likely to be using it, so you have less re-heating to get it up to temperature due to cooling while unused. And it is also likely to be a larger capacity reservoir of hot water, leadnig to yet another case of smaller surface area to volume ratio, meaning said energy loss due to the cooling of the water is even smaller. Finally, by its very nature it is more likely to already be serviced in a way that adding electric dryers even if indvidual ones (bad, should communal ones) or whatever is not a problem.

Well on the plus side if you live in apartments you're already way more efficient in terms of heat use.

​@@sylkatesI read it in the opposite sense. It seems to me that the original comment was saying that higher-density living units are better. (As was explained in a further comment, there are many positive energy efficiencies that you get with higher density.)

Have you played Satisfactory?

FtB Ultimate is a brilliant way to learn about the benefits of electrification and a simplified way of teaching how it’s done!

The only things I learned from modded Minecraft is that flowers are the best technology, forbidden knowledge is cool and blood sacrifices are perfectly okay

Modded Minecraft is goated. Made me develop an interest in math and physics from a young age.

What mods do you use for Minecraft? I get yelled at by my friends for liking redstone too much, so I feel it would be fitting

I'm curious, wouldnt the labor be the same between upgrading the panel size vs replacing with the SPAN panel? If so, why is there the large cost increase with the SPAN unit vs. part cost?

hello fellow okie! 👋

I would be worried about the longevity of the embedded computer system in this panel because looking at modern major appliances with expensive microcontroller boards cost a lot to begin with but if the board goes bad, it's just easier and cheaper to replace the whole appliance than to replace the board. The way this panel is built as well, inconveniently, the SPAN panel foolishly puts the computer board BEHIND the breakers instead of beside it. Also, I would want a system like that to use off the shelf components like a Raspberry Pi or ATX or ITX PC with free and open source software for these duties, effectively reducing cost and ease of repair. Also, so the panel, with its "smart" breakers to operate like the passive breakers in conventional load centre/service entry panels.

​@@WJCTechyman I doubt products like raspberry pi would pass any regulation. It's not like your internet router at home. My best guess is that SPAN chooses good quality electronic components and tests their products thoroughly so they don't get a bad rep of low reliability and high maintenance. But yes, concerns raised in comments are all legitimate and we have a long way to go.

@@know1care Rasberry pi's are just boards with chips and they are highly reliable...its the same thing that would be put into any other instrument except with a vast amount of capability.

I'm glad someone mentioned nuclear. Anyone who's serious about energy will admit how inherently limited solar and wind technology is, and anyone who thinks we can rely on either (or both combined) to entirely replace fossil fuel burning is incredibly naive. The only solution is to stop being afraid of "Chernobyl events" and embrace nuclear. This might come as a shock to some, but nuclear reactors that are constructed today are WAY more sophisticated and safe than those made by the corner-cutting Soviets back in the day. There is no longer any reason to fear nuclear.

And it's worse in every possible way. Your load panel isn't where you want complexity and imagine you want to charge a car or something, too. At some point you just need more watts. This video really feels more like an ad than anything else.

The environmental cost of smart circuit breaker sounds lower than everyone upgrade to 200A. The maximum total electricity load to the electricity grid will be lower. Even if electricity energy can be stored in battery then be released to the grid for high load, battery charge-discharge is far from 100% efficient. But I agree, the subscription model of most "smart" stuff and their "cloud" / phone-home tendency are putting people off.

@@billyswong upgrading to 200 amp service does not mean you are using more energy. I completely disagree with your conclusion.

@@pkuras The electricity companies need to take care of potentially higher peak energy use. That peak energy use can occur and will occur. It doesn't matter the new peak is in fact 120A or 150A. Higher is higher. Factor in that the cost of electricity generation does not line up linearly with the amount generated because of infrastructure issue etc, I hope you get what I mean.

@@billyswong sure, no argument there - as electricity use increases over time (for all reasons), the grid will need upgrades to accommodate higher usage. This has always been true, and the adoption of EVs is not unique in this regard, though it may result in a faster rate of increase in demand. But for one or a thousand electric customers to upgrade their service from 100A to 200A by itself has zero bearing on actual usage. There is zero causal link between a service upgrade and an increase in electric usage, and your original comment implied as much.

I am in a similar situation but western Washington. Washington’s hydroelectric dams have given us great experience that other states need to learn from. As you said the all electric house is reasonably common. The transporting of electricity is another one. We didn’t get much choice where the power was generated compared to where it was used. We are really good at moving the electricity from Snoqualmie Falls to Seattle. So when Bonneville power administration did a huge amount of wind, getting that electricity to Spokane and Seattle was nothing new for us. But most other states just put power stations 20 miles from their big cities. So when you tell them they can make a ton of solar electricity but it’s 200 miles away they freak out. Their engineers have literally never worked that problem.

Also from eastern Washington State. Hydroelectric yes, but also Nuclear Power. I built my home long ago before electric HVAC and stoves became reasonable to use. So my house uses gas. And thank god for it. My power bills are half what my neighbors pay with newer electric HVAC/stove homes.

Whatever the cheapest utility is in the area makes the most sense. In southern California, natural gas is cheap, the basic bill can be as low as $13 per month. We have lots of gas appliances here because it makes the most sense. Electricity is the most expensive utility by far here. We have some apartments that are all electric but they are typically utilities included in the rent price. I would not want to live in an all electric home in California, the monthly bill would be as high as a mortgage payment.

...but your climate is also not super cold in the winter.

@@bpark10001 I'm not comparing my energy costs with someone from Wisconsin. I'm comparing my energy cost with my next-door neighbors. They have new all-electric houses which they put in because electric power is cheap around here. Even so, they pay twice the amount I do because, even if electricity is cheap, natural gas for high energy uses is about 80% cheaper. $200 for electric heating, $40 for gas. I have this financial advantage because I live in an old house that was not built to the modern standards. I understand that it is a little counter intuitive, and it may be the product of my exact geographical location, but electric heating for 1) HVAC, 2) water heaters, 3) stoves and 4) clothes dryers...is not always the cheapest choice. All four of these energy hogs in my old house are gas, becuause that is the way they were built 40 years ago. It was the best choice then, and are even a better choice now.

Lovely, that's four times more, than my gas and elecricity costs for a year, and ten times more than the electricity bills for a year (note: our utility prices are currently heavily subsidized).

​@@asdfhun , panels last 20-30 years, typically. I agree it's too expensive for most people (especially since upgrading service is cheaper), but it's worth thinking on the scale of decades not a couple years.

Yeah these things are very pricey, and you do have to do some number crunching to decide which, if any, are going to be beneficial. If you can upgrade to 200 amp service for less than $4500 then great, but it'll be way more than that for a lot of people depending on whether the existing lines running to their house from the street can handle that (and how far from the street their intake is if those lines need replacing), whether the street box itself can handle that, the local cost of equipment and labor for doing the installation, etc. If you look at @asdfhun's response though, they sound like they're doing an "its way too expensive!" knee-jerk reaction take. Yet at the same time, they also state it would pay for itself in 4 years. (Of course that's just the panel - they'd need to change all their devices as well so the total cost will be much more, and may not be justified if the dollar cost is your singular concern. Again, they'd have to crunch the numbers.) But also keep in mind, you don't have to do _everything_ all at once. Start by checking your attic and see if simply blowing a bit more insulation around will be beneficial. If you're running R5 and you can push it up to R20 or higher at moderate expense, that in itself may save you quite a bit of money over the course of a few years. Windows can be expensive if yo have a lot of large ones that can only be "fixed" by replacing them, but doors are often easy: A lot of time you can significantly improve your doors by just adding some cheap weather stripping around the edges. Once all that's done you can start looking at replacing appliances. Again, you only need to worry about doing so one at a time. A heat pump is a great start because, despite the implication from the video, you can often just bolt it on and continue using your existing gas furnace as the "emergency" heat source rather than replacing with resistive. After that is kind of up in the air. The next-most-viable upgrade option is going to depend primarily on your usage patterns and the local cost of gas vs electricity. If gas is more expensive you'd probably want to replace your kitchen range (induction stoves are particularly efficient) as that's probably using the most fuel given you typically cook more often than you do laundry. If electricity is more expensive for you, you could try something like the dryer (or maybe even that furnace which should no longer be running too much after the heat pump is installed). But in that situation you might be better to look at pausing the appliance replacement and considering some solar panels and/or battery system before adding more electrical load, just so you aren't paying the higher grid prices when you do finally get around to switching the remaining appliances. There's a lot of options and pathways. The smart panel is probably one of the last ones you'd need to worry about (ie: once enough things are electric that tripping the main breaker starts becoming a real concern). The main takeaway is that its OK and even better to think about and take action in steps rather than trying to do it all in one fell swoop. (Unless you're in building a brand new home.. if you're in that position then just do it right the first time and save everyone as well as the planet a lot of hassle and expense in the future!)

you've got to think that with greater uptake the prices of those sort of smart panels will reduce over time. They're very new tech, it's to be expected they are a premium price at first

​@@emma70707 but do you truly believe a smart system will be operating for 20 years? That the service won't be discontinued by the company? I doubt even the flash memory in the controller is rated for 10 years.

Get a house that uses Passive House standards. The insulation is so perfect, you don’t need a heater (though one is included for backup)

Leviton makes a good alternative smart panel with smart breakers. Check them out

ya it's pretty bad i had to subscribe to Maytag to update our washer.. also our relay on our washer was shot on a board. issue was our warranty was useless because no one come out here to repair things so we had to wait 4 months for a new board Sears was the last company out here that came to repair things

[whispers] NATIONALISATION

Same thing with all cloud-based things, or other "smart" things. Some bit goes sideways and nothing works anymore.

climate change is a hoax though... other wise explain why they're not recapping leaking methane wells several million of them are leaking.. Not a single one

lol "demand" (as in electrical load demand) I saw a pun in that carry on 😎

It's very DIY right now, but there are several GET and POST endpoint available locally and a local method of generating an auth token. There's a lot of info in the thread on the HA forums titled "Integration with Span?", including interaction with some SPAN employees.

That’s a pretty bad one honestly. Like what happens if span as a company disappears in 10 years?

@@nasonguy I'd be shocked if a bad capacitor or a tin whisker doesn't take the electronics out before 10 years is up. I just wouldn't trust something as important as my main electrical service to a "smart" device unless I was sure it would fail dumb when the electronics die instead of failing dead.

@@disjustice I love the idea, but I'd REALLY hope if something went wrong it falls back to being a normal breaker. I like the idea of more control over items but I'd like a failure mode to revert it back to a dumb device vs. taking everything with it.

Even beyond the fact that most IOT things are fundamentally poorly designed systems, the fact that you're supposed to be okay with the utility company just saying "Nah no electricity lmao think of the planet." absolutely does not sit right in my moral view. Like - you are providing a service for which I am paying you, mind your own Fing business.

EXACTLY. Too many people spend money they don’t need to spend just because the technology is new. “Penny wise but dollar foolish.”

And for decades we have used simple contactors to turn off loads like space heaters when something like the sauna stove is heating up to avoid tripping the main fuses. Also many car chargers and geothermal heat pumps come with current sensors that you install in your breaker panel and they will dynamically limit their power draw if the total draw of the house is nearing the service limits.

@@dave655467 Well we have nuclear power in Finland so this winter shouldn't be too bad unless the nuclear power stations break

@@dave655467 They get the uranium mainly from Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia. They've got multiple suppliers and long supply deals so there shouldn't be a sudden price hike.

@@dave655467 I don't understand your point? You're saying that nuclear power plants consume more energy than they produce? I'm an electrical engineer so I am fairly sure I know how electricity is produced here and thanks to nuclear we have more production than consumption in the country so unless several nuclear power plants go down at the same time, we're fine.

@@dave655467 Well I know the situation is worse in some parts of Europe, but Finland has enough nuclear for our own needs. Coal is only about 10% of the electricity production in Finland, oil is only the last resort if the grid is about to go down for example if a big power plant gets disconnected from the grid. Anyway electricity will be cheaper this winter than last winter for sure.

Also, the gas network never goes down.

@@mark.audacity Exactly, a 15 amp genny can get you through a blackout in the dead of winter.

I think most people don't want to spend $10-20k and throw away perfectly good appliances and breaker panels just to make themselves feel better. It would make more sense to throw up some solar panels and actually contribute to the energy mix rather than burn loads of cash becoming more of a siphon on it.

​@@mark.audacity this is a joke, right? It absolutely does.

Same here.

Yeah smart thinking gas still works when power lines are down and generators are the best thing in power outages especially for weeks on end. 73

A tornado is a rare event for individuals. Probably first tornado your neighborhood has seen in 200+ years. Including inefficient & dirty fossil fuel for the 1 per 200 year event is silly.

My house is 100% electric. Even after hurricanes is still works, because it’s underground & not affected by high winds

@@electrictroy2010 I don't have that choice all power lines are above ground with lousy poles. We don't deserve the ones of metal or concrete. Well I have a generator and my water heater is propane. Even if you have underground the substation is above ground. And can be knocked out. Hope that never happens. 73

@@electrictroy2010 It was a once in 25 year storm…tornadoes and straight-line winds are rare, but not once in 200…that’s just exaggerating to prove a false point. Power outages are common. From a few hours at a time to a day or two, especially during the winter due to ice storms and the spring due to wind events, natural gas is quite literally a lifesaver here. Electricity is not 100% reliable, but natural gas is. It would be better if we had all underground utilities, but that is cost prohibitive in established neighborhoods, and still wouldn’t make it 100% because most of our outages start at the substations and other mid-level distribution infrastructure.

I was thinking the same thing. I’d rather have the ambient temperature change slightly for a moment than mess up my food.

And the heat from the cooktop ultimately ends up in the house anyway. Not as much as the same watts from a pump, but still, not zero either.

I was thinking I would probably give washing machine for example quite high priority as I wouldn't want it to suddenly stop in the middle of a program.

Can confirm. We have a small farm house, all electric, 100 amp service. Everything works great, and when we cook the baseboard heaters in half the house don’t run because the oven and stove kick out more heat than the heaters.

@@MauryMarkowitz What if it's 100 degrees outside and you already run your air at 76 to save energy and you don't want the expense of replacing all this stuff just for the inconvenience of your house being a sauna when you are cooking?

We just called them energy management systems back in the day.. I never saw one that wasn't buggy back then

That extra heat is not an advantage, unless it's cold outside.

@@dizzywow This is in the context of "throttling your resistive heat" so yes, when it's cold outside.

assuming your home doesn't have a very poor insulation quality, it may be better to just leave your heater on a lower temp all day and throw a shirt/sweater on when you're not cooking than try to throttle it specifically, just from a practicality standpoint

While not common, there are heat exchanger systems that pass incoming water to a water heater through a heat exchanger connected to the waste water drain pipe, thus recovering a majority of the out going heat in the water going down the drain when taking a shower. Not so good for baths since the hot water is drained after the tub is filled. There are also heat exchange, or energy recovery, systems for clothes dryers that warm the incoming makeup air into the laundry with the dryer exhaust air. My home has an energy recovery ventilation system for the incoming and outgoing air, and a minisplit for heating and cooling. Very cheap to operate. A lot of this comes down to cost and the homeowner being willing to invest in these systems. It is also much more expensive to retrofit than to include in new construction. I believe building codes need major upgrades for new construction to increase overall efficiency, especially commercial buildings. I also believe that buildings should be required to be brought up to new codes as part of any resale. As an electrician who has crawled into a lot of attics and underneath a lot of floors, and worked in a lot of walls, it always amazes me how many buildings still have little to no insulation.

@@eveleynce The heat will still be on and throttling on/off (at full effect) independent on the temperature it's set to(within reason). You would still risk the heater turning on just as you are using your stove.

I absolutely relate and agree

Unless I'm missing some nuance of active priority, the first two on the list are functionally interchangeable, as they don't exceed 100 when added.

What about the concern of potentially fucking up something by essentially "unplugging" and "plugging in" a potentially high-value item to turn it off/on while it's drawing power?

@@grafzeppelin4069 My laptop's battery and four power divider's switches broke when I flicked my breaker to pull a wire. Good times. Yea, I don't want switches breaking on their own, and I surely won't ever run unprotected wires to any of my electronics again.

Ya cooking is more important than keeping your pipes from freezing and ac who even need that anyway but your stove if it was gas could heat your house enough to keep water from freezing and eat but electric stove will be insane to leave on and open I guess that's why all restaurants have electric stoves what gives that nice grill marks right and I am sorry not attacking ya you have your opinions and can set whatever you want in your home for priority just depends on your situation I guess this is my opinion

​@@Koogz406 Since you were so polite in not attacking the OP with your passive aggressive comment, I'll make mine similarly polite... Bluntly, you're being unserious. A heated home heated to 18C cannot drop to below freezing in the time that it would take to cook a meal. It doubly cannot do so while the meal is being cooked by a heat producing device INSIDE THE HOME. This is the whole point of the video. The heat is not shut off indefinitely, it is only shut off for a short time to manage the load. I have no idea what you're even off about on restaurants?

This is something I would like to hear more on. I live in an older house with really old windows, but I'm not keen on replacing them (partially just because I just think they're neat). So other forms of improvements would be interesting to me.

@@Descriptor413 when i moved into my 1905 Queen Anne style home in 2008 I had a window professional give me an estimate for all new wood-clad vinyl. He was honest enough to say that my original double-hung sashes, coupled with tight-fitting aluminum storm windows, would be more energy efficient than replacing everything with new vinyl. I'm sure he was right. My house isn't drafty and utility bills are low, despite the size of the house.

​@@Descriptor413 Last week I had 4 windows replaced by Pella. One was a big 6'x3' single pane window. The other three were the cheapest vinyl windows you can find. After all were replaced, you could immediately feel the difference. The house is staying much warmer than it did before. Especially good timing with the arctic vortex this week. On the other hand, it cost $8K. So it gets pricey fast. If I'm being honest, it probably won't pay for itself in dollars for a very long time. But I will be more comfortable and feel less worried about running the heat or AC. Next up full energy audit.

I live somewhere where gas is the norm for those three, and I hadn't heard of a gas powered tumble dryer. Granted, not a lot of people have them at all.

They're rare. Most people use electric. Gas water heaters are more common.

I've never owned an electric dryer. Lots of gas appliances where I am

Gas dryers are more common than electric in Michigan.

There used to be gas-powered refrigerators. I'm not sure if there are any today.

I thought architects were switching to Revit? I'm a building engineer and we use Autocad but a lot of our architect clients use revit

@@poisonpotato1 Revit is easier in a lot of ways an I am familiar with it, I just chose to use AutoCAD for this project, it's just easier and faster to just draw rather than model

you'd better design some nice looking buildings hombre

@@bookymydoor that's the idea

@@TheRubyGamesOG I’ve used AutoCAD in my HS’s drafting class and i can confirm it absolutely succs sometimes. Would love if they had revit

I wonder about this too. What's the current start of battery backup? How practical are they? At what price point?

Isn't what you have already a decent solution? A generator is perfectly fine for emergencies when there's an electrical grid

thats not relevant for 99% of the country. Just move out of Cali

Maybe fifteen? Twenty? years ago, it was in many places cheaper to run your house off a IC car engine running on natural gas, hooked up to a generator, than it was to get electricity off the grid. This required using the engine exhaust for heating, of course. It essentially gave you high efficiency natural-gas based heat plus free electricity. Naturally this all relied on cheap gas and an environment where you needed the heat, so as soon as the weather gets warm enough you would need to switch back to the grid.

@@RyanDiederich How is it not relevant? Blackouts happen everywhere and most houses have natural gas service. I live about as far away as you can get from California and the house across the street from me has a whole-house generator that kicks in as soon as the power goes out.

A loop hole that should be closed. Pay your fn taxes. 😠🤨🧐

@@tomtheplummer7322 So the government can queef it away? Nah

@@tomtheplummer7322 if corporations paid the tax they should be then none of us, including our old pal Technology Connections would have to pay any 🤷‍♂️ I'm not going to cry about someone saving a few grand when corporations fuck us on the daily.

Linus from LTT is the king is this regard.

It's one of the few things that usually make sense when it comes to renewable energy outside of being wealthy enough.

Same here, I haven't even turned on my traditional boiler this winter season!

Aren't efficient ductless mini-splits awesome? Had ours (triple head) just under 2 years and it's been a great upgrade. We are also about halfway through a full renovation (which includes upgraded insulation everywhere), can't wait to get it all finished!

See my home would benefit but I’m in New England where one corporation controls the electricity supply so the rates are too high to justify the change

@TheSpaceCoyote82 He actually does explain the cons… The grid is being expanded constantly when it comes to energy production whether that’s solar on homes/businesses or new power plants. SMRs will eventually evolve into the ability for us to have nuclear power that is cheap and highly adaptable.

@TheSpaceCoyote82 The only thing that runs without electricity in my home is water heat (pilot light heats a thermopile to keep gas valve open). And maybe the Internet for about an hour (UPS).

Many years ago we had a show in UK called 'Tomorrows world' and 99% of the exciting stuff they showed never happened in the 'real world'....

sadly, "think of the convenience of controlling everything from your phone!" turns into "don't protest the government or your [bank account / home] gets freezed"

Too bad it's largely ignored!

That’s neat, but average American home uses at least 11kwh per day. And that’s not even with electric vehicles or going all electric as most American homes have dual fuel.

@@scallywag1716 kW is not kWh... One is power, the other is energy.

@@scallywag1716 yes, you have indeed a higher demand that justifies the higher maximum, because of your quite big houses too compared to European ones. But I can tell you I use something like 6000 kWh per year with a 230V 5 kW service, so a little less than 20 kWh per day. However our demand is spread across the day because our main use is HVAC both in winter and summer. We still use gas for hot water and cooking (100 smc/year) Before 2022 I used gas for heating too while using HVAC just in the summers. Back then we had a 3.3 kW service and we used 4500 kWh per year. But we used something like 700 smc of gas per year 90% of which in winter.

Other italian viewer here! yeah having 100A available is pretty insane to think as an European where the standard is 3.3/6.6 KW max! Electirfication seems like a no brainer with that much of overhead available

​​@@mirkomilova most homes in the USA are setup for between 6kw-48kw. A big reason we use NG for heat especially where I am is gas compared to electric, gas is significantly cheaper cost wise per year. Electric heat would cost 3x as much(at least compared to my 95%+ efficiency furnace)

Also, I'd love to see you revisit your old natural gas video. It's been six years and it sounds like you think things have changed.

That sounds really underpowered to me. Speaking from Norway, the standard for an apartment nowadays is 40A, 3 phase 230V. But if you're unlucky you could even find 25A, single phase. It also depends how heating is conducted. Many houses and apartments have electric radiators, which can draw a lot of current. It is not unusual for breakers to trip if too many radiators are on at the same time. 14A single phase sounds like you have to walk on egg shells all the time.

​@@Eduard2004 In our apartment in spain the main circuit is protected by a single line 20 A circuit breaker (MCCB) with c tripping charateristic . We have been using all all electric appliances since the 90s, including conventional electric heating. The only time the MCCB tripped was using the electric heaters, while cooking a multi course meal using the oven and several plates of the stove.

Tl;dr Use heat pumps for everything. That solves your problem too. Yes, same here from the Netherlands, with 8 (or 17 nowadays) kw being the norm. The upgrade to 17kw 3P costs €250. But then again, our heat pump dryers consume up to 1kw in practice, and the heating of the house at max maybe 3-4kw. Keep in mind that we often use the same heat pumps for water heating as for warming the house. And as long as you have a way to dynamically limit the car charging, you will never have any issues, even if you are full electric. A whole video about how to "cope" with a 24kw instead of 48kw sounds so foreign to me. My historical max in a full electric house (no car) is 9kw for about 2 minutes.

I live in France were things are a bit different. When we bought our house it only had 6kW which was fine, since it had a gas boiler and stove. We have replaced all that with a heat pump and induction stove, and we updated the connection online to 9kW, we also have an electric car. A technician is coming soon to upgrade us to 12kW, which should be fine. Listening to Americans talk about 100A/24kW as small seems hilarious to me.

I was definitely wondering how much it would just cost to upgrade from 100A - 200A. I'm assuming the cost can vary significantly, though.

A much cheaper option than Span is an EV charger with load management (for that load) capability. Usually that is enough to fit all else in a 100 A panel. It works by monitoring the main feeder current and adjusting accordingly.

In my case it was $5000 more expensive than the 200A upgrade. I really wanted it, but I couldn't justify it.

@@ehhhhhhhhhh If you hired an electrician to do it - yes. Costs will vary. But like I said it's pretty easy to do. I was without power for a few days and borrowed a generator from a friend.

Not to mention the much much higher efficiency than electric when it comes to heating things.

@@xy4489 I think he did a video explaining that electric is 100% efficient at generating heat.

@@jakeaurod But the generation of the electricity at the source is not 100 percent efficient

He did say he was gonna discuss this in the next episode. I’m interested to see what’s in store!

​@@vasiaswolfram3113 When it comes to heating a house, a heat pump is closer to 400% efficient, though that goes down if the temperature difference is really large.

Brian Gerst I install heating and AC units in Alabama. I have a 4 ton heat pump in my own house. Last summer I removed a very good, very functional gas furnace because of the price of natural gas. I replaced it with the heat pump. Last winter we had a gas bill that went all the way up to $400. That is WHY I replaced it. This winter I actually had a power bill of $600 . And as I said, I am in Alabama. I couldn't imagine how HIGH the bill for it would have been in Michigan. KEEP YOUR NATURAL GAS. If nothing else, keep a couple of gas heaters as backup. I am an HVAC tech of almost 20 years.

This is a much bigger problem than people realize. Power plants are being shut down because of the fight against fossil fuels, and they're not replacing them with anything. They've simply been reducing the capacity of the grid, borrowing electricity from neighboring states when their demand exceeds their output. This has left us in a precarious position because the overall capacity of the grid is decreasing as demand is going up. There's nothing wrong with using electric cars and appliances, but it's incredibly foolish to increase electricity usage and decrease production at the same time. This is already leading to an increase in rolling blackouts, and it's going to keep getting worse.

and the "local" pumping station goes out ??? it DOES happen then NO GAS to run your Furness with

Staying on natural gas doesn’t protect you from that. The pipelines that bring the gas to your home require pumps to run. Pumps that utilize electricity. That was one of the problems that happened in Texas, there was no power to run the infrastructure to bring to fuel to power plants to generate the power needed to run the system. In theory keeping a wood or coal stove, or keeping a gas tank would work, though the former two are relatively inefficient at heating homes and produce a lot of particulate matter that’s not good for your health (though still preferable to dying by freezing), gas tank would be better, though that is a potential safety hazard in that if there’s ever a leak and a fire, your house would quite literally explode (which still should be rare enough that it shouldn’t happen). Alternatively, battery storage and home renewables can provide at least some basic power even if the grid collapses, or a mini-diesel generator if you want to be old-school about it. Finally it’s usually a good idea to pressure your state politicians to ensure that the state’s electrical grid isn’t going to fail during critical weather events, like what happened in Texas two years ago. Writing to your representative helps let them know what issues you’re worried about, and relatively few people do it, so it can be a decent way to have an outsized influence.

I live in the Buffalo area so blackouts in the winter are just expected most years. I have animals that need higher temperatures to survive and I currently live in a mostly-electric home because that’s what was available. Not having a gas stove to be able to heat water for them in the winter is one of my biggest worries in this house.

I have that in Australia. It is such a pain

We have shared service transformers in the US as well. It's one of several significant oversights in this video.

It's also quite common in Japan, and the voltage is even lower.

​@@meneldal i lived in japan, it is also 110 like the us, and the outlets are the same.

@@WeedMIC Japan is officially 100 (though it can get to 110), while the US is 120V so you do lose a bit there (and also makes a lot of appliances perform much slower).

Yeah insulation can be crazy expensive and replacing old windows too. But I keep seeing folks saying we need to save energy, yet they tell you you don't need to change your insulation. It's just ridiculous. During peak hours, I turn off the heating in my apartment to save money: the temperature drops from 22.5C to 18C in a matter of 2-3 hours (when it's -25C outdoor). It's even worse if it's near -40C outdoor, it drops to 18C in about 2 hours. I don't care as I'm not home when this happens, but the days I am, it gets really uncomfortable quickly. I let you imagine how cold it is near the walls if it gets to 18C at the thermostats. The proper way is to insulate. Then, if the enormous energy saving isn't enough, it's way easier to turn off the heating for a few hours when you're house is properly insulated.

Merrit Order

And that craziness hit France as well despite the fact that 70% of the electricity produced in France is nuclear and another 10% hydroelectric. In other words there is no real price crisis, it's scripted.

Profiteers gonna profit

Thats because the EU is hyper-corrupt.

@@srfrg9707 It's because the electricity pricing in Europe is based on the most expensive energy source, ie coal.

Never heard about such a device in Denmark. We have 3x48A @230V in our apartment. Houses tend to get 3x64A @230V. There is loads of power. But prices have increased.

Just as long as the government can't override the relay and turn off your stuff without your permission, something that I feel is inevitable since politicians are control freaks.

@@trex2099 3x48 or 3x64A @230V, geez! Here in Hungary, the norm for homes is 1x32A, or 3x16A, but plenty of homes have 1x16A @230V. Including our house, and if it's not crazy enough, we only have a 16A breaker on the input of the power meter. On the output of the power meter, there is a single 10A (ten Amperes) breaker, and the entire house runs on that, because there are 60 years old aluminium wires inside the house in some rooms. There is a separate, remote controlled power meter for the water heater, though. But we learnt that we can run either the washing machine, the oven, the microwave, but only one of these at the same time, otherwise the 10A breaker might trip. But after the oven is preheated and cycling on and off, and if we use the microwave at reduced power, two of them can work together, because thankfully the 40 years old 10A breaker is slow, so it can provide 16A for about 10 minutes before the thermal cutout kicks in (maybe even 15-20 minutes in cold winters, because it is outside).

A "Lastabwurfrelais" is only used for very special applications or fixing a design flaw in your circuit.

@@kttk4564 I've seen those priority relays in quite a few Finnish homes, most cases I've seen it's just a simple case of preventing Sauna from going on at same time as Kitchen Stove. On the use cases mentioned in this video, you could just do same but vs. the car charger. They're simple things that allow people to have lower service level.

Counterpoint, if almost all houses run 100% on electricity that means higher demand for a more robust electric grid. Losing power for any significant amount of time here in Sweden is extremely uncommon.

If it's a short outage (1-12 hours), just have sandwiches or something else that doesn't need to be cooked. If long outages are a common issue in your area, either pick up a camp stove or stockpile a few MREs per person. Yeah, a camp stove is still (probably?) a gas stove, but it's being used FAR less often than your main stove is, so you're relying on gas far less often. And MREs aren't as memetically bad as they used to be - they also usually come with chemical heating elements, add water to it and it makes your food hot for you. A grill also works - it's just a really big and non-portable camp stove, after all.

The first thing I did after moving in to my new apartment was to disconnect from the gas grid. 😄 Power outages are extremely uncommon here though, so it's basically a non-issue. Induction stoves provide all the same benefits in terms of speed while not posing any of the potential health risks of gas stoves. Cleaning also becomes significantly easier.

@@blunden2 Yep. Unless you're prone to consistent and extended power outages (over a day long, several times a year) for non-disaster reasons (as those would interfere with gas as well) there is zero sensible justification for a gas stove in your house. In all cases beyond those VERY narrow ones, electric/induction ones will do just fine. Keep some food that doesn't need to be cooked (cereal, sandwiches, etc) just in case, and maybe pick up a camping stove or a grill as a backup in case of an extended outage.

@@synvila Also this is a good point yeah. More electricity means a more robust grid is *required.* Plus it's not like gas lines can never be interrupted either.

True. But electricity can be good cus its very compatible. Its just cheaper to put electricity lines in poles instead of underground, so electricity lines can be disrupted easier.

Where I live, the only gas appliance is a forced air furnace, fueled by propane stored in a 500 gallon tank. I would love to go 100% electric and just have my tank of gas sitting there indefinitely in case of an emergency. One fill of the tank isn't quite enough for an entire winter, but it is close enough that I could make it work.

Gas also relies on central systems to maintain pressure. Also electricity can be generated on-site which cannot be said with natural gas or gasoline.

This is definitely true, however there are solutions out there which don't necessarily require keeping a gas connection. Obviously, Ukraine's situation is a bit too tenuous to suggest any solutions for, but there are many ways to store energy that aren't necessarily batteries. I'll be talking about that in part 2.

My 4 gas burners on my stove kept my house warm enough during a 4 day power outage that my pipes didn't break and I didn't have to sleep in my car with the engine running.

As a Swede, you should know the idea pays for your country's defense, so yeah, things are different.

Wood warms you up twice. Once when you chop it, then again when you burn it.

Where I live, California, some areas banned wood burning fire places years ago and they are attempting to do it everywhere here.

@@fretbuzzly I would LOVE to hear the BS excuses for passing that regulation.

Especially in the context of this video, using wood-fired heating means you do not have an entirely electric home.

​@@grafzeppelin4069air pollution. When a number of homes in a dense suburban neighborhood are burning wood, particulates go up and it hits air quality.

I've only ever heard of those being used in RVs.

@@eDoc2020 I know some people use those on their non electrified cabins in the middle of nowhere. But newer seem those used id grid power is available at all.

Came to see if anyone mentioned that. And yeah, they're mostly in RV's, but I do know at least 2 people that have them in their house, but not as their main fridge.

Adsorption refrigeration requires little heat or energy to start the refrigeration cycle, maybe a large candle flame, a 30 pound propane tank lasts for months.. I have seen these appliances in off grid wilderness homes where electricity is solar, water turbine driven, wind driven generators. Lighting is all low voltagae, low current Light emitting diode upgrades from older RV 12 volt direct current bulbs. These led bulbs use a tenth or less of the power the present 120v ac lights use, and many already have been swapped over to led style, so lighting is not the demand on the power...it's the work horse designed appliances like cooking range, electric element heating appliances (home spaces and water). The best heating fuel would be one that burns clean, leaves little or no carbon ... That would be hydrogen as one that can be generated from plain water..yes..plain water contains hydrogen and oxygen.. H2O...how do we separate them is another science. Check it out..

@@Barracuda48082 Absorption refrigerators use much more energy than typical compressor-based refrigerators. And 12v LED bulbs are similar efficiency to 120v ones, not that it matters because the power is low either way. The problem with burning hydrogen is there's a lot of energy lost during electrolysis if you generate it from water.

Have you checked out Orange or Plugzio for your EV charging needs? They offer a solution without directly tying to the meter that gives landlord or tenant options for monitoring charging costs.

@@jdlutz1965 There are plenty of companies like this offering various "managed" charging solutions, and the reality is they're all a terrible deal because the monthly "management fees" form a significant fraction of the cost of the electricity in a typical residential dwelling with a "one charger per owner/stall" arrangement; Orange for example looks like it charges $20/month per outlet, which translates to 750km of range in my EV per month "wasted" on unnecessary fees. In most cases, a building looking to deploy charging for a bunch of the owners (when you otherwise can't tie it to their own meters) is better off just deciding on a fixed average rate (adjusted based on measured aggregate usage) that approximately covers typical power cost and just charging that to owners directly themselves (no middleman required). It might be slightly less "fair" but when half the money isn't going to some other company to "manage" the solution you still come out well ahead. Still, this kind of thing requires buy-in from all/most of a building to bother installing which is currently still a hurdle with uptake of EVs low in multi-tenant dwellings. The whole point of a solution that hooks directly up to a tenant's/owner's meter is that it _avoids_ these management fees entirely - you pay nothing other than the incremental per-kWhr cost for your charging. Particularly for those who don't drive a whole lot each month, this can be a huge savings and it's also just a huge reduction in administrative burden and grief not having to deal with managing a whole other system, especially for smaller buildings (ours is only 18 units).

Another option that is relatively conventional but could be a solution to your dilemma is a meter/breaker combo panel. I'm not sure if you have a gang meter but if each meter is in a unique housing, could employ this method that provides a disconnect and some extra breakers in housing that holds meter.

I have one... I use it mainly in the winter, they work very well and are pretty cheap to run and the hot air blowing out goes through a water filter (to catch debris). This is awesome in the winter as it is also keeping my house warm (ie. Get twice the benefit at same cost). In the spring and summer I use clothes lines which cost nothing.

yeah. I didnt even know those were a thing

Gas dryers are very common in Michigan

Hope it's a heat pump

Only way I'd even consider a "smart" load center is if it was capable of being managed entirely on-prem and the protocol was fully documented. I've had way too many idiotic fails with proprietary "cloud" services and won't even consider vectoring my home lighting through "the cloud", let alone much more essential equipment.

The energy corps would just regulate your energy use as they see fit for their convience. Happened in Texas with smart meters during that snowstorm.

Correction: The US 100A service is actually at 240V, so the total power available for 100A service is 24 kW, and with 200A service, it's 48 kW.

@@radishpineapple74 oh. That's a lot of power then.

@@radishpineapple74 Which is interesting when you realize that even a small car has 100 horsepower or around 74 kW. So your car engine could easily power your house and the neighbors and heat them both from the waste heat. Which would be stupid environmentally and economically but interesting nonetheless.

That is a fun fact! Is 400V used frequently, for water heating maybe?

@@timgerk3262 For electric on-demand water heaters it is used (as those need a LOT of power). But the normal boilers are typically only 1400 or 2000 watt and just use regular 240. In my house it is only really used for the stovetop/oven combo. It is more of a headache than an advantage really. But its not something easily changed and it was like this when I bought the house. Because as mentioned I really had to pay attention to balancing the phases. (don't put all heavy consumers on one phase for example, figure out the stovetop really only uses 2 phases to get 400V and use the third one for all plugs in the kitchen so if you run a heavy duty appliance on those + the stovetop the whole thing doesn't overload And yes electricians, I know it doesn't really 100% work like that, three phase gets really confusing when figuring out actual load on the phases when you have 400V consumers) It might be advantageous in the future for the electric car charger. But with the capacity charges they now introduce you want to charge slowly anyways so it really isn't that much of an advantage. The main reason it was often used is to save on copper wiring. as with 400V+N I can get 17300 VA over 3x4mm² (15AWG) wires whereas 63A requires 2x10mm² (8AWG) or even 16mm² (6AWG) when crossing larger distances and that is for less overall capacity. (The earth is sourced locally and always in 16mm² here) Internally it is probably that way for the stovetop as well, by using three phase it can use thinner wires as 400V carries more power in less amps.

And adding a heat pump is just about the same as adding a cooling-only unit. The main difference is in the thermostat wiring.

What heat exchanger u used ? Is it owned by you, did you install the system yourself, a community project ? Why u needed to replace the pump, more compacity needed ?

I hate my stupid hybrid water heater. Have to disable the heat pump in the winter or else the basement will get into the 30s. And I still don't see a big drop in energy usage even when it's in heat pump mode.

@@person749 I like the ones that have a separate evaporator that goes outside but almost no options for them in the US currently. Where the "all in one" units seem to make the most sense is warm climates where the water heaters are electric anyways, they tend to not have basements, and they have the AC on 80% of the year. In Australia I have seen people have their water heaters outside their house!

@@randomvideosn0where Can confirm. Where I grew up in Australia, the government was paying people to replace their electric water heaters with the dual heat-pump types. Mine was outside on the side of the house. Pretty much no one I knew except for rich people had basements either.

@@randomvideosn0where Oh if I lived in Texas it would be a miracle machine!

I want "green energy" to work - but the more time passes the more it seems like every single one of these countries that is having catastrophic electrical infrastructure failure and price inflation that would make Brazil look like a functioning economy has been the ones that are making the hardest pushes towards "renewable energy". Maybe instead of renewable energy we should be focusing more on SUSTAINABLE energy eh?