Preparing your Home for Electrification
So you’d like to electrify at least some of the gas appliances in your home. Now what? You might think that adding an electric appliance wouldn’t require any infrastructure changes because your home already has electricity. However, electric appliances like EV chargers, heat pump water heaters, heat pump dryers, and induction stoves use more power than most other domestic appliances. As a result, planning is necessary to ensure your appliances have the power they need without overloading your home’s wiring.
You’ll want any electrical updates in place before your current appliances fail. If your gas water heater breaks and you haven’t planned ahead, you’ll probably settle for a new gas model rather than go weeks without a hot shower. There’s also undoubtedly some convenience in hiring one contractor to make upgrades at one time rather doing it piecemeal.
As you think about a plan, it’s important to think through three key areas. It will probably help to consult with an expert like Certasun.
1. New Circuits
Do you already have wires capable of powering electric appliances running from your breaker panel? The answer is likely ‘no’. With rare exceptions, each gas appliance you replace will require a dedicated 240 volt electrical circuit. For example, you’ll need such circuits for:
- An EV charger
- A heat pump water heater
- An induction cooktop or range
- A heat pump dryer
The volt (abbreviated as “V”) is the standard unit of electrical potential, but you can just think of it as the pressure of the electricity in a circuit, much like the pressure in a garden hose. Most household circuits operate at 120V, but high power appliances use 240V.
An exception to this is circuits for heat pump HVAC. For this, there is enough variation in what you might need and where you might need it that you’ll probably want to run circuits for those as part of a plan to install that particular system.
2. Service Capacity from your Utility
Perhaps the most fundamental question to ask as part of any electrification planning is whether the wires between your house and your utility can deliver enough electrical current to supply the new loads you’d like to add (or be ready to add).
Electrical current is measured in amperes (frequently called “amps” and abbreviated as “A”).
Electrical current is roughly analogous to current in a river. The Mississippi River has more current than your neighborhood stream, for example.
Most homes in our service area have 200A service. Some homes, however, only have 100A service. A few larger homes have 400A service.
Certasun can help you determine what your service capacity is and whether it is likely to be sufficient for your plans. If it isn’t, now is a good time to ask your utility for an upgrade. Upgrades can be free in some cases and quite costly in others, so determining whether your service capacity is sufficient is very important. We also have some techniques to avoid upgrades (more on this below).
3. Capacity in Breaker Panel
You should also make sure your breaker panel has sufficient capacity for your plans. You need to assess this in two different ways:
First, you (or your electrician) will need to check the electrical capacity of the panel. This is how much current can safely flow through it at any given time. This can’t be bigger than your utility service capacity, but it must be at least as large as the total current your home could use.
Second, your panel must have space for additional circuit breakers. You’ll generally need two unused breaker spaces for each 240V circuit you want to add. For example, if you want to add an EV charger, a heat pump water heater, and an induction cooktop, you’ll need six open breaker spaces.
If you don’t have sufficient breaker spaces in your current panel, you’ll need a larger panel or an add-on “subpanel”. If your panel has sufficient breaker spaces but not enough current-carrying capacity, you’ll need a larger panel or a load management device (more info below).
Avoiding Upgrades
If either your utility service capacity or main breaker panel capacity is lower than the result of a load calculation that assumes your new electric appliances, you may need to upgrade it. Upgrading can cost $2,000 to $12,000 or more, so we use a number of approaches to try to avoid it:
Automatic Load Management
An automatic load management device prevents certain appliances from running at the same time, thus limiting the total load on your system. Of course, it would be inconvenient if appliances did not work when you expected them to. For example, you probably want your cooktop or oven to turn on whenever you decide to make dinner. EV chargers, however, are great candidates for load management because it is unlikely to be a major inconvenience if your charger does not run for a few minutes or even a few hours. Your car will still very likely be fully charged in the morning.
Circuit Sharing
Many EV chargers can be set to share the available capacity of a single circuit with another charger. For example, two chargers, each of which is capable of drawing up to 48A, can be set to coordinate with one another so that they never collectively draw more than this amount.
EV Charger Derating
EV chargers can be set to draw less current than they are capable of using (called “derating”). Most chargers can use up to 48A, but you may find setting your charger to 40, 32, or even 24A has no material impact on your experience (because your car will still be full or mostly full by morning). This could be a wise choice if it allows you to avoid a costly upgrade.
Get a Home Electrification Plan
While you might be able to figure some of this out on your own, having an expert like Certasun help can be a lot easier.
We offer Home Electrification Readiness Audits and Home Electrification Plans so you can see exactly what you’ll need to do to electrify your home and how you can best take advantage of available incentives. To produce your plan, we will assess your home’s electrical system in detail during an on-site visit (that’s the audit part). Then, we will develop your plan considering your stated priorities and the age of your appliances. We will also try to minimize electrical upgrades and maximize your eligibility for federal, state, and utility incentives. Each plan includes a quote for us to do the work we recommend, but you are free to use the plan with another electrician if you’d like.
Home Electrification Plans are complimentary for new Certasun solar, EV charger, and battery storage customers and are available on a standalone basis for $450.
Get a Home Electrification Plan
We will start with a comprehensive Home Electrification Readiness Audit of your home.
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