ELECTRIFY Stories - Whole House Electrification!
Hear from people who have disconnected from gas completely, and made the switch from fossil fuels to clean electricity to power their whole homes.
Anne - Portland, OR
“I try to live as sustainably as possible. Until a year ago, this largely meant recycling and minimizing waste. Electrify Now opened my eyes to the biggest culprit of my carbon footprint: burning fossil fuels for energy. Luckily, this knowledge came as I was buying my first house – a 1896 Victorian with lots of charm that needed serious remodeling. I vowed that my house would be all electric and ASAP.”
Joe and Naomi - Portland, OR
“For our family, electrifying everything has been neither expensive nor hard. It has basically meant replacing old, inefficient gas appliances at the end of their lives with new, energy efficient electric ones. We started by removing a 20 year old gas furnace and replacing it with a heat pump, and then kept going. It was so fun to call the gas company and say “Hi, I’d like to cancel my service.”
Peter - Portland, OR
“It’s always been about CO2 and minimizing our contribution to climate change. The 2007 Prius was our gateway drug to electric transportation – trying to keep the engine from burning gas is just so much easier if you get rid of the engine.😊 So, in 2011, we got our first Nissan Leaf, and it’s been a one-way street ever since.”
Tim - Ontario, Canada
“Even in Canada, heat pumps are a viable solution to electrify your home. This photo shows my heat pump in winter. I heat my water with an on-demand electric water heater from Rheem and my Ruud heat pump is supported by my Ruud air mover with a 10,000 watt strip heater. My electric bills have not been any higher than my combined electric/gas bills from before, even with the addition of charging my Kona Electric car. That’s why I capped the gas line!”
Steve and Lisa - Los Altos, CA
“We are on the path to decarbonizing our lives. Years ago we had an old school bus that we converted to veggie oil and drove around the country from restaurant to restaurant collecting oil. Now we have EVs, and we replaced our gas furnace and water heater with heat pumps. We love our induction cooktop too and our house uses so much less energy now.”
John and Mandy - Portland, OR
“Early last summer, I attended a couple of the ‘Electrify Now’ educational webinars via Zoom. This convinced Mandy and I that electric heat pump systems would be perfect for our soon-to-be-replaced gas furnace HVAC (which had been limping along for the past two or three years) and our almost 15-year-old gas water heater.”
Jane and Paul - Portland, Or
“Our 1925 stucco duplex in NE Portland has been a good investment with several upgrades over the years; insulation in the attic and walls, double paned windows, storm doors. It seems to be energy efficient. Along the way, I asked contractors about converting to all electric. ‘We don’t recommend fuel switching and your gas furnaces are pretty efficient’, was the response I got more than once. Then in 2020, frustrated by the lack of legislative action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions we decided to look into going ‘all electric’ again.”
Going Street Commons – Portland, OR
“Going Street Commons is a vibrant community of modern, all electric, zero energy-ready homes nestled in Portland’s Cully neighborhood. These homes were created by Birdsmouth Design-Build and Green Hammer with high-quality materials and craft to deliver ultimate comfort and performance. The community includes 11 homes with common gathering spaces and gardens. Homes feature energy-efficient appliances, abundant natural lighting, and are built to ensure healthy indoor air quality and a community-minded neighborhood.”
Brian and Perrin - Portland, OR
“When I retired from corporate sustainability several years ago, I started researching how individuals could fight climate change. I was shocked at how little information was available about how we could all participate in re-inventing our energy systems to get off of fossil fuels – the heart of the problem. I was delighted to find all of these available solutions I had never heard of – like heat pumps. Perrin and I decided we should try these things ourselves before recommending them to other people. That was the start of Electrify Now”
Bill and Jan - Portland, OR
“We converted our house from natural gas to all-electric because we wanted to stop using fossil fuels. We replaced our gas furnace with a heat pump, our gas water heater with a hybrid electric, and our gas range with electric induction. The gas meter is gone, the service line is cut and capped at the street. We have 22 solar panels on our roof and a Tesla Powerwall for storage. The heat pumps are working well for us and the new range is great. Between the gas-to-electric conversion and our solar panels, our utility bills have really decreased.”
Bob and Lorrie - Ashland, OR
“Our new heat pump water heater and heat pump space heater give us plenty of heat and hot water! We used the existing ducts from the old HVAC system so it was a relatively simple switch. We swapped out our gas range for an induction cooktop a year ago, so we're now an all-electric household! We cooked with gas for decades and were worried about how induction would measure up, but we love our new cooktop. It cooks more evenly, is more responsive, and has better fine-tuning than any professional quality gas ranges we've had in the past.”
Want to share your ELECTRIFY story? Please email us with a picture and a brief quote.