Converting Our Home to 100% Renewable Energy
For several years, Judy and I have talked about switching our home heating system from natural gas to electricity generated by renewable energy. We replaced our old gas water heater with an electric one almost four years ago. in 2023, we looked into replacing our old gas furnace with an electric heat pump. We had had our gas furnace since 1999 and worried that it would die sooner or later on a cold winter day. Without getting into a detailed physics lesson, heat pumps work by pulling heat from cold outdoor air and transferring it indoors. But during warm weather, the heat pump pulls heat from indoor air and transfers it to the outdoors. Heat pumps are more expensive than gas furnaces, but large federal rebates (up to $8000) were promised by the Biden administration which would have eased the pain to our wallets if we purchased one. However, the promised federal rebate program never seemed to get going. After last year’s election, we...
