Replace Gas with Electricity
Burning gas at home directly produces greenhouse gas emissions. The best way to eliminate these emissions is to not burn gas. When we purchased our current house, the following were running on gas:
- Heating - a ducted central heating system
- Hot water service
- Cooktop in the kitchen
All have been replaced with items running on electricity.
Within a typical Australian home, the following accounts for the household energy use:
- Heating and cooling – 40%
- Heating hot water - 23%
- Lighting - 7%
- Cooking - 5%
- Appliances and technology (including the refrigerator, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, TV, computers and mobile phones) - 25%.
As a result, highest priority was given to upgrading heating and cooling, followed by heating hot water and replacing the cooktop was the lowest priority.
Reverse cycle air conditioning
We have installed four reverse cycle air conditioning units in the lounge, family room and two bedrooms. These replaced a central gas heater. We chose not to go central heating with electric heaters so that we can better control which parts of the house are heated or cooled – this is particularly important when only two of us live in the house most of the time. We installed the units in the two bedrooms that had the highest regular usage.
We did not install all of the units at one time. The lounge room unit was installed in 2012. The family room and main bedroom units were installed in 2018. The fourth unit was installed in 2019. In 2018, we had to upgrade our electrical circuit to three phase power in order to handle the load of the new units. The power upgrade would have become necessary at some time as we added more electrical items to the house.
To minimise the electricity used by these units, it is important to ensure that the units are of an appropriate size for the areas that needs to be heated and cooled. We got three quotes and asked questions to ensure that the recommended units were the appropriate size for the space.
The temperature is set at 20 degrees in winter and 25 degrees in summer. Increasing the temperature in winter or decreasing the temperature in summer will significantly increase running costs. We clean the filters twice yearly to ensure optimum performance.
The air conditioning units are not left on over night. We have sometimes used the timers on the units to provide some warmth in the living areas prior to getting up early in the morning.
As we have a five bedroom plus study, we needed to consider heating for the bedrooms without an air conditioning unit. We did not install air conditioning units in these rooms as they are not used very often. We purchased two portable Rinnai electric panel heaters and move them into the rooms when required. For much of winter, we do not heat many of these rooms.
Heat pump to heat hot water
In 2020, we replaced the old solar hot water service and gas booster with a heat pump. The old service was out of warranty but was not “dead”. We decided to proceed with buying a new heat pump primarily because of the desire to remove gas from the house as a source of greenhouse gases. We sought advice and quotations from three suppliers to ensure that we were selecting an appropriate size system.
I did this about 4 months before installing additional solar panels. I had considered installing a heat pump and a solar hot water service. As I had decided that we would install the solar panels, I knew the panels would generate electricity during the day to run the heat pump. We thought it was better to use the roof space to install solar panels in preference to the evacuated tubes. As it turned out, we did not use the roof space on the north facing roof for solar panels. Installing the heat pump at the same time as the solar panels might have been better.
We have setup the heat pump on a timer so that it heats during the day using solar power generated from the solar panels on our roof. We limit shower times to less than 4 minutes, which reduces the hot water we need as well as saving water, another valuable resource. We run the dishwasher and washing machine on cold water and therefore not requiring hot water from the hot water service.
Induction electric cooktop
Our biggest challenge with this was to find a cooktop to fit in the kitchen space. Our preferred cooktop initially would not fit in the existing space. If we wanted to make the space larger to fit the preferred cooktop, we found that the bench would have to be sent away to be cut to the required size. It was also likely that the splash back would be damaged as well and need to be replaced. We would need to end up doing a kitchen upgrade!
We then visited a number of other suppliers and found a cooktop that would fit into the required space. We then needed to engage an electrician to install the unit. It was not possible to have one supplier provide the cooktop and complete the installation (which was the case with the air conditioning units and hot water service). In the end, it worked out okay after seeking some assistance from one of my daughters in removing the old gas cooktop.
Costs
The move from gas to electricity has cost us a total of $16,500, including:
- $7,000 – four reverse cycle air conditioning units
- $1,800 – upgrade of the electricity circuit to three phase
- $4,700 – hot water service (including removal of old system)
- $3,000 – induction electric cooktop (including installation)
Replacing all the gas appliances with electricity has eliminated our gas bill. Our gas bill for the last ten years was $19,215. It would have been much higher if we had not implemented this program of replacing the gas appliances with electric appliances. The greatest saving was made with installing the reverse cycle air conditioning units, as the central heating system was very costly to run.
More information:
https://www.yourhome.gov.au/ An Australian Government guide to creating sustainable homes. Lots of ideas on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as explanations of different solutions. You can even download plans for architecturally designed sustainable homes.
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