Electrifying my heating

So lately the news has exploded here in Australia specifically in Victoria has been the aim to electrify homes, it has been interesting watching the campaign lately and how fast it transformed from Gas is Bad to We are out of Gas.

My parents were kind to purchase for us a RCAC consisting of two systems, a 9.5KW Daikin Alira, and a 8KW Super Multi-NX set to 4 split systems on the upper floor.

Since we built the house in 2014, I was hoping to electrify it, we have panels, and I realised the opportunity to use the electricity that the house generated to power the home for some of the main functions (Heating/Cooling, Cooking, Hot Water) all of this can be replaced with electricity, I do believe however this has been due to one large revolution in technology.

This is the Heat-Pump, the refrigeration cycle is the most effective way to heat and cool, the other is induction cooking systems which can act as a reliable alternative to gas for stove top cooking.

Using the RCAC for heating and cooling so far has been an interesting experiment - I estimated that we would spend about 30-40 dollars more on electricity per month given, so far this has panned out.

Generally for heating our gas heating costs about 100 dollars a month during the cooler periods, and here in Victoria 60-70% of the time heating is used. Our gas bill the last quarter has been 75 dollars most of it was supply charges (45-50). To remove the gas supply entirely from our home we would still need to replace the hot-water system and the cooktop.

These are expensive items, but then this is a problem, Victoria is going to have a large gas shortage problem, AEMO released a paper a while ago stating that Victoria will have a gas supply problem due to the bass straight fields emptying. If I stay on gas I am exposing my self to the fluctuations of the Gas industry, now oddly enough there is a glut of gas in the world yet prices here are high.

So what is the cost, from 5K to replace the gas water system with a heat-pump, this would free up space on the roof for more solar panels. Potentially another 8K-10K for the oven, these items are not cheap, even accounting for the removal of a supply charge and gas consumption, the offset to electricity the savings over the life-time invested on the items will not pay for at least 20 years. However is this the right way to see this? Because I am not sure people think of Ovens as a way to see savings, there are advantages that are not counted for in terms of pricing, for example cooking with induction is safer, cooler, and more effective (90% of the heat reaches the target vs 40% of gas). Oddly enough the Freestanding oven I have the main oven is electrical, is only the cooktop that is gas. This is why the price is so high, to replace a function I have to replace the whole unit, paying 70-100 dollars to have the use of that cooktop is not exactly making sense, not to mention where upon I am generating electricity on my roof.

Those are the big two items at the moment on the road of shutting the gas supply here in my home, however the other part is reducing the amount of energy spent heating - Australia in general lags behind in building efficient homes, still need to improve the insulation and general thermal effectiveness of this home before more savings a realised.