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As we roll further into this decade,

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we will undoubtedly accelerate our collective endeavor

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to stop constantly working to extract gross
sticky goops and explodey gasses out of the ground,

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spend more effort purifying and refining that gunk into products

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that we then promptly set on fire to just get a moment’s work out of...

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before we’re forced to do it all over again.

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Because, ya know, we set fire to it.

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It’s gone now.

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Luckily, we have this amazingly flexible electric infrastructure out there which,

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while today does still do a fair bit of burning stuff to keep the lights on,

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is doing that less and less.

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We have these technologies that you build one time and then!
They make electrical energy for decades just because they exist!

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And yeah they’re trickier to manage, which is a problem we’re actively working on,

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but every passing year breaks a new record for renewables generation,
and that’s pretty neat.

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And wouldn’t ya know it, most things we do today which involve 
setting fire to something have an electric alternative,

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including everything you do in your home.

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The catch, because there’s always a catch,
is that those alternatives take work to deploy.

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So in this video, I’d like to discuss what’s needed
to electrify the typical American home.

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It may seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be; 
we have some pretty slick tricks up our sleeves.

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This video is the first of two parts.

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Here, we’ll mostly be talking about how energy management innovations can sidestep the headache of a service upgrade.

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In part two, we’ll discuss alternative appliances
which can make the switch even easier,

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and we’ll also go over some potential solutions
to dealing with power outages in an all-electric home.

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Three quick notes before we start:

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First, I’m going to be focusing on the American home because, y’know,

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me live there,

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but the fundamentals are generally the same no matter where you are.

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Second, I’m not going to go into operating cost comparisons here as that’s a very local consideration.

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But I will just point out with a hint of snark that in case it has escaped you the prices of fossil fuel products have gotten pretty dang volatile lately,

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meanwhile electric technologies continue to get cheaper and more efficient.

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And lastly, in a similar vein, I’m deliberately
not talking about the stuff that needs to be done to the power grid.

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You don’t need to write-in about that — we all know
that’s a big challenge ahead of us,

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but that work is happening as we speak.

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I’m here simply to talk about the work that needs to happen
in your home to make setting fire to stuff just to live your life a thing of the past.

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And the good news is that in many ways, it already is.

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The vast majority of the stuff you use and rely on is electric:

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from hair dryers to air fryers,

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curling irons to waffle irons,

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your refrigerator,

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deep freeze,

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that extra fridge you have in the basement,

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coffee maker, panini maker,

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microwave oven, toaster oven,

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your air purifier,

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your computer,

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your phone,

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your internet modem,

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your TV,

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your game consoles,

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lava lamps,

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videocassette recorders -

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all that stuff plugs into the wall and gets power that way.

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They even

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— get this —

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they even make cars now that plug-in.

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Something tells me this electricity business is really catching on!

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In fact it’s caught on so well that entirely-electric homes are quite common!

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They’ve been the norm for decades in some parts of the country.

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However, particularly in colder regions, many millions of homes are out there which currently rely on combusting a fuel somewhere inside them to provide heat.

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You, like me, may very well live in one of those homes.

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Sometimes the fuel is the scented methane we like to call “natural” gas,

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or it could be propane, fuel oil, maybe even wood

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or if you’re feeling particularly old-school coal.

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That is in fact still a thing in some parts.

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Although homes which burn fuels almost always have access to electricity, too,

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they still very much rely on those fuels to function.

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And that presents some challenges to completely electrifying those homes.

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How many challenges, you ask?

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Four.

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4.

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Seriously, it’s just four.

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At most.

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And that’s the really good news here.

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Unless you’ve got something fancy like a gas fireplace or a garage heater,

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maybe a grill,

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you only have four things which might use one of those fuels.

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♫ sudden game show music ♫
And they are...

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Your furnace!

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(or boiler if you’re of that persuasion).

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Your water heater!

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Your kitchen stove!

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And lastly,

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get ready Europeans, here comes another weird American thing,

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your clothes dryer!

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Yeah. We do that here.

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Look! New LG tumble dryer… hooked up to a gas line!

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A very good and normal practice!

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But that’s really it.

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Your heat source, your water heater, your stove, and your dryer 
are the only four things we have to contend with.

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And many homes, especially if they use a fuel that's not natural gas,
already have the electric version of one or two of those.

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Maybe even three.

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Speaking of three,
dryers, water heaters, and stoves don’t vary all that much from home to home

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so installing the electric versions of those things is pretty straightforward.

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The only thing that’s gonna need much customization is your heat source,
and that’s not exactly a new reality anyway.

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So… if there’s only four things to tackle at most…

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why is this difficult at all?

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Well, those four things all need a lot of electrical power to operate - significantly more than can be provided by a standard household outlet.

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But that’s no problem, right?

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Everybody’s got access to 240V in their electrical panels,

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so just run new wires and Bob’s your uncle!

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Well, sure, that’s something that’s gonna need to happen

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(if we assume conventional appliances, stay tuned for part 2!)

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but the lack of the appropriate circuits
going to those appliances isn’t the only problem.

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There’s also one of capacity.

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That’s the real show-stopper, here.

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Many homes that lean on gas appliances to do the heavy-lifting don’t have enough electrical power available to make all those electric things work.

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Except, uh, they do.

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Almost always.

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Conventional wisdom says they don’t,
but conventional doesn’t always mean correct.

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But first, one last side-note.

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I promise, this is the last one.

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I should address here if you haven’t already gathered that so
far I’ve been talking about single-family homes, and, well,

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that’ll continue to be the case as we go on.

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Multi-family buildings will face many of the same challenges for electrification,

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but there are just so many different ways that they can be set up.

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For instance, lots of apartment buildings have big central boilers
that distribute heated water to radiators,

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but others have fairly conventional furnaces with central air conditioning in each unit,

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and others still have packaged air conditioners which already provide electric heat.

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And that’s before we get into water heating which may or may not be centralized.

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Setting aside all that wonkiness,
retrofitting those buildings is outside the responsibility of tenants

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or a collective responsibility in the case of condo ownership.

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So while I’d like to talk beyond single family detached housing,

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other situations are just way too complicated to get into,

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your mileage will vary, see store for details,

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let’s get back to the capacity problem.

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Alright, so generally, a home built here will have either 100A or 200A electrical service.

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Those aren’t the only two options available,
but they’re the most common by far.

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If you have 200A service, you don’t even need to be watching this video - 
your home can easily be all-electric right now,

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assuming it’s not a McMansion.

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But oodles of homes, even pretty big ones, only have 100A service.

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And this was a perfectly rational choice back in the day.

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Gas appliances usually need some electricity to operate, but that’s just for running blowers, pumps, igniters, and control boards.

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They get their heat energy from the fuel they burn,

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so they don’t really tax your electrical system at all.

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When all your appliances which could be gas are gas,
the only big electrical demand in your home is air conditioning,

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and even if you need a real big honker of an AC unit, you’ll
have at least 50 or 60 amps left for your lights and whatnot.

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And that’s more than plenty.

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However, electric appliances like heaters, stoves, and dryers
have to convert electricity into heat and that takes a lot of power.

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To give you some sense of their power needs, a conventional electric water heater pulls 18-24 amps when it runs.

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A clothes dryer pulls pretty much the same when you’re using it.

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And a 3-ton air conditioner when it’s running?

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Well there’s another 20 amps right there.

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Just those three devices pull perhaps 65 amps.

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And a conventional electric range can pull up to 50A.

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Switch that guy on for dinner and now we’re at 115 amps!

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Which is too much!

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We’ll trip the main breaker every time we make dinner, so

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I guess we have no choice but to arrange for
an expensive and disruptive electrical service upgrade.

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But hold on a minute.

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Did you catch the little qualifiers I kept sneaking in there?

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When it runs.

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When you’re using it.

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And up to.

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100A electrical service still allows you to pull up to 24 kilowatts (!) from the grid,

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and that’s a lot of power!

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Way more than you almost ever use.

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On average, US households consume 1.2 kilowatts.

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Which only 5 percent of that.

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Now obviously, that’s an average.

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Over the course of a day, power consumption goes up and down
depending on what you’re doing at any specific time.

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But that is the key - time.

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We’ve got lots of it to play around with.

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Most of the time, our homes are just sipping power from the grid.

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Heck if you’re away from home on a mild day
without the need for heat or air conditioning,

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assuming you didn’t leave any lights on,
the only electrical loads are your fridge and internet modem.

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And those are tiny!

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Even if we add up all the vampire loads from your smart... whatevers,
we’ll draw maaaaaybe 2 amps.

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Unless the fridge happens to be in a defrost.

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Then maybe it’s more like… five.

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At least until it’s done.

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Anyway, the point is we only draw large amounts of power 
when we’re actively doing stuff!

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Even heating and cooling,
which is the largest energy expense of most homes, isn't a constant load.

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Extreme weather might make an HVAC system
work really hard on rare occasions,

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but even when that’s happening we can work around it.

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The only practical limitation of 100A service is that you can’t run every high-power load in your home at the same time.

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That might sound like a bummer
but I promise that you never actually need to do that.

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Now before you start thinking I’m gonna give you a big flow chart
on how to manage your energy use manually,

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rest assured that’s not where I’m going.

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But think about this for a bit.

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How often do you actually use your dryer?

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Probably on laundry day for a few hours, right?

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The vast majority of the time, that’s not an electrical load you have to consider.

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How about a water heater?

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Well, it will actively run when you’re using hot water
and for a bit afterwards to recharge the tank,

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but once the tank is back up to temp, it hardly runs at all.

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Alright, and now let’s consider a standard electric range
(which, by the way, just means combined cooktop and oven).

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While one of those can pull 50A,

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it’ll only do that IF the oven is on

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and ALL of the cooktop burners are on, too,

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and at *full-power*

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So in other words,

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it never pulls 50A except for maybe a few seconds on Thanksgiving.

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Most of the time it pulls essentially nothing, but even if you’re cooking a complex meal and using all the cooktop burners,

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most will be running at reduced power or cycling on and off, 
same with the oven element once it's preheated,

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and so more realistically it pulls perhaps 25A - 
and again, that’s only when you’re using it.

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So obviously, if you’re just a little careful about what you do and when,

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you could have all the electric things
without going through a service upgrade.

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You just gotta make sure all those big loads don’t come on at the same time.

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Heck, you can even throw high-power electric car charging into this mix so long as you make sure the car can’t charge when other stuff’s going on.

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This might sound tricky to manage,

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but what if I told you that smart circuit breaker panels are now a thing?

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You might very well do what I did and go like this:

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[exasperated sigh]

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What‽

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No!

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Stop it!

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That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard of.
This IoT stuff is really getting out of hand.

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What could you po…

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oh.

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OOOHHHHhhHHhhHHHHhhHHH.

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Right now, your breaker box has one job:
safely distribute power throughout your home.

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The main breaker keeps you from overloading the
wires going into your house,

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and the other circuit breakers keep you from pulling too
much power on the individual circuits they protect.

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Some might even offer arc-fault protection
and ground-fault protection, too.

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But that’s it.

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It won’t disable power to any circuits
for any reason other than a fault,

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and then you gotta have Jimmy go reset it.

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But what if it could selectively disable power to high-draw loads when required,
and reconnect them later?

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Since all the power in your home goes through this thing,

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it could easily monitor which circuits are active and how much they’re pulling.

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With some pretty simple programming,
you could have such a breaker panel divvy up those 100A across devices,

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keeping you from ever exceeding the limit,
and all while prioritizing active circuits so you don’t even realize that’s happening.

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Span is one company offering smart load centers

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(that’s the technical term for breaker panel).

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They’re not paying me to talk about them, I was connected to them via a fan of the channel,

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but I did have a conversation to discuss the details of their product so I could better understand what it does and how people use it.

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At its core it's a breaker box like any other,

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in fact it even uses standard circuit breakers
which remain the protective devices and allow for manual circuit isolation.

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But behind each circuit lies an additional switching device that the panel can control.

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Plus, it monitors power at the individual circuit level, allowing you to determine exactly how much power is being drawn and where it’s going.

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Right now, Span’s main customers are folks interested in things like solar energy and battery storage integration

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who want to be able to track and optimize their energy production and use with the data the panel can provide.

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So, in other words,

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nerds!

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I say that with affection, of course, because that very much includes me.

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That’s very cool!

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But, part of that optimization is identifying low-priority circuits so they can be disabled in times of energy scarcity.

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That can extend your runtime when operating on stored energy,
and thus lower the amount of storage you need in the first place.

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But not everyone is a well-off energy nerd
who can afford solar panels, batteries, inverters, and all that jazz.

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Most of us rely on the plain ol’ grid, and what excites me most about Span and products like it is that they can eliminate the expense of a service upgrade

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and bring complete electrification to far more people with far less work.

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Now I know not everyone will love the idea of smartifying
your breaker box, but before you dismiss it let me illustrate the potential.

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Say you’ve got conventional electric everything — 
let’s even throw a 30A car charger in the garage

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— but you’ve only got 100A service.

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Conventional wisdom says this is a terrible idea and you’ll
be tripping the main breaker constantly.

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But if you assign priority levels to each of those high-draw appliances,

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a smart panel can prevent lower-priority devices from running 
when others are in use and eliminate that problem.

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Let’s say you arrange it like this:

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Your HVAC system always takes priority.

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Next is your stove. Then your dryer. Then your water heater.

251
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And finally, your car charger.

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That would be my recommendation, I think.

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With the panel constantly monitoring the total draw on your system, a hypothetical cold winter evening might look like this:

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Your heat pump is running hard and combined with all the other low-power draws in your home you’re drawing 40 amps from the grid.

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You start making dinner, and switching on the oven plus a burner on the stove brings that up to 60 amps.

256
00:16:58,256 --> 00:17:05,033
At this point, since another large load like the microwave, water heater, or even just another cooktop burner might appear,

257
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your panel preemptively disables the car charger.

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You probably weren’t even charging the car anyway

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but we don’t want a surprise 30A showing up right now.

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So now, let’s say someone else in your home
decides to start laundry while you’re cooking.

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Adding the dryer to the mix while cooking a meal with the heat running

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pushes you up to 80 amps - 
and at this point your panel takes further action,

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temporarily disabling the water heater.

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Which, by the way, is a perfect load to kill as even if it stays off for several hours,

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the water in the tank will stay piping hot and you can still use it as you please.

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It’s literally a battery, just a hot and wet one.

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Once you’re done cooking, the panel recognizes the load from the stove
 has dropped off so it re-enables the water heater,

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re-charging that wet-hot battery (if needed).

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The car charger remains locked-out, though, 
as the higher-priority dryer is still in-use and the heat is still running.

270
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Once the laundry's done, though, your car is free to charge again.

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I hope you see the potential here.

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This hypothetical home would have been at risk of tripping the main breaker, which is never fun,

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but disabling lower-priority loads prevented that from happening.

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Your breaker box can be more than just an energy distribution device — 
it can be a command center, too.

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And all throughout this scenario it could send alerts to you
to inform you of what exactly it’s doing.

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Plus, with deeper integration with appliances, we don’t even need to go all-or-nothing.

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As a matter of fact, Span offers an intelligent EVSE, or car charger, that can offer charging speeds as high as 48 amps when possible,

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and dynamically lower output when other demands in your home increase.

279
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So maybe you can’t charge quite so fast when you're cooking dinner,
but you can still be charging.

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There’s still a lot more potential here, though.

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Span and products like it are connected to the internet — 
though real quick they don’t necessarily have to be!

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I know plenty of folks will scoff at that and I brought this up in
my conversation with Span.

283
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I’m leery of it being online myself.

284
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I expect we’ll eventually see some sort of
local configuration option which is set-and-forget.

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Details TBD.

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However, remote monitoring can be quite useful.

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For instance, it could tell you something is wrong
with your heat while you're away.

288
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And with the proper incentives and permissions, a smart
panel could also be an important strategy in so-called virtual power plants,

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which allow utilities to manage and balance power needs by, say, commanding water heaters to switch on when there’s excess power on the grid,

290
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or reduce demand in power emergencies in a more delicate fashion than
“just shut entire neighborhoods off.”

291
00:19:47,610 --> 00:19:53,103
But that’s largely future stuff, and may I remind you
before you write in with your dystopian hot takes,

292
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remember I said with proper permissions.

293
00:19:55,941 --> 00:19:59,574
I hear you, and understand you, but let’s be reasonable.

294
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Working together has some benefits, y’know.

295
00:20:02,201 --> 00:20:07,519
Now, energy-managing load centers like Span are creating
something of a new frontier.

296
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Electricians might look at you like you have three heads if you say 
"I want to install one of these so I can get electric everything with 100A service!"

297
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And that’s understandable.

298
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Electric codes dictate that load calculations be done to determine the minimum service level for a home based on what’s in it,

299
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and old calculations will generally not result in 
100A being OK for an all-electric home.

300
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But the good news is that the code is adapting to these new
load-side management solutions.

301
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It may take some time for knowledge of the solutions to spread to permitting offices, utilities, and other regulatory bodies, though,

302
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so that’s something to keep in mind.

303
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And hopefully I’m helping!

304
00:20:48,113 --> 00:20:53,755
Also something to be aware of is that if you’re
looking to make any of the changes we’ve discussed so far,

305
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there may be incentives to do so.

306
00:20:56,044 --> 00:21:02,937
That might be in the form of a rebate or a tax incentive, and that’ll vary depending on where you are and what else you might be doing.

307
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You’ll definitely want to consult with someone who knows those particulars,
 and for the record that is not me!

308
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But I don’t want you to leave money on the table.

309
00:21:11,450 --> 00:21:16,846
And finally, let’s now get into the weeds of
the tricky thing that is building heat.

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Dryers, water heaters, and stoves can all easily be
managed and installed

311
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as they’re just single objects without too much variation from home-to-home and climate-to-climate.

312
00:21:27,179 --> 00:21:34,276
But what heats your home can be any number of things and also depends on the size, age, and condition of your home.

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00:21:34,276 --> 00:21:37,398
And let me start with that - I’ve said it before in other videos,

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but a key thing we need to be doing is building envelope
upgrades to reduce the need for heating and cooling energy in the first place.

315
00:21:44,791 --> 00:21:50,325
More insulation and better windows and doors 
will go hand-in-hand with building electrification,

316
00:21:50,325 --> 00:21:54,534
as the less heating and cooling you need, the easier it is.

317
00:21:54,534 --> 00:21:59,827
Luckily some incentives are starting to roll out
which you should look into if they’ll be helpful for you,

318
00:21:59,827 --> 00:22:05,817
but for the purposes of this video,
we’ll assume your home is already reasonably well-insulated.

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Now there is one thing I know for sure,

320
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and that is that what you’re gonna need to efficiently heat your home with electricity

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00:22:12,105 --> 00:22:13,469
is a heat pump!

322
00:22:13,469 --> 00:22:21,422
With one of those bad boys you can spend 3 kW of power running the pump
and get 9 or even 12 kW of heat energy out of it.

323
00:22:21,422 --> 00:22:26,133
They're the closest thing we have to free energy
and that’s why they’re cool as beans.

324
00:22:26,133 --> 00:22:29,899
Check out this video of mine if you want to know how exactly they work.

325
00:22:29,899 --> 00:22:36,719
But what precisely getting a heat pump will look like
depends a lot on what currently heats your home.

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00:22:36,719 --> 00:22:41,264
If you have a forced-air furnace, you’re probably in an ideal situation.

327
00:22:41,264 --> 00:22:47,425
Especially if you currently have central air conditioning, 
because that means you already have a heat pump!

328
00:22:47,425 --> 00:22:52,328
It might only pump one way because
why spend the $50 on a reversing valve when gas is cheap?

329
00:22:52,328 --> 00:22:57,321
But you’ve got a 240V circuit already going to the outdoor condensing unit.

330
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That’s a huge leg-up and there’s tons of housing
here in the US set up precisely this way.

331
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That’s good.

332
00:23:04,893 --> 00:23:12,156
Even gooder is that cold-climate air-source heat pumps 
continue to get better at operating in frigid temperatures.

333
00:23:12,156 --> 00:23:18,490
Heat pumps that work effectively below -10°F are just around the corner
from domestic manufactures,

334
00:23:18,490 --> 00:23:22,212
and, uh, already here from Asian manufacturers

335
00:23:22,212 --> 00:23:25,595
but nobody tell the likes of Carrier or Lennox, it might hurt their feelings.

336
00:23:25,595 --> 00:23:33,854
Anyway, once those are commonly available, 
the same circuit that currently runs your air conditioning can also run your heat.

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00:23:33,854 --> 00:23:39,396
It may need to be bumped up in size depending
on your specific situation and heating needs, though.

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00:23:39,396 --> 00:23:45,146
The more daunting challenge for electrification
is how to manage resistive backup heat.

339
00:23:45,146 --> 00:23:52,891
When it gets so extremely cold that a heat pump
can’t work effectively, or even just to provide backup in the case of a mechanical issue,

340
00:23:52,891 --> 00:23:56,433
good ol’ fashioned heating elements will step in.

341
00:23:56,433 --> 00:24:00,869
That could be as simple as some space heaters strategically placed around your home,

342
00:24:00,869 --> 00:24:04,233
but most people appreciate a more permanent option.

343
00:24:04,233 --> 00:24:10,432
In a home with ducted, forced-air heating,
so-called heat strips in the air handler can switch on when needed

344
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turning that air handler into a giant hair dryer.

345
00:24:14,391 --> 00:24:19,451
There’s just two problems: first, well there’s another circuit you'll need to run.

346
00:24:19,451 --> 00:24:22,564
Your furnace has graduated and needs more juice.

347
00:24:22,564 --> 00:24:26,985
And second, it might need a LOT of juice.

348
00:24:26,985 --> 00:24:32,100
In a large home, the heat strips might suck down 20 kilowatts.

349
00:24:32,100 --> 00:24:34,397
That’s 83 amps right there.

350
00:24:34,397 --> 00:24:36,046
In one thing.

351
00:24:36,046 --> 00:24:42,295
However, and I cannot stress this enough,
heat strips are rarely needed when you have a heat pump.

352
00:24:42,295 --> 00:24:49,754
Already in many climates they’re basically only there to aid in defrosting the heat pump and to provide a backup in case the heat pump fails -

353
00:24:49,754 --> 00:24:54,518
in fact many thermostats will refer to heat strips as “emergency heat.”

354
00:24:54,518 --> 00:25:00,975
And if you live somewhere it hardly ever dips below freezing, you can probably just skip them altogether.

355
00:25:00,975 --> 00:25:08,736
So the heat strips are not something we should expect to operate frequently and as heat pumps develop and get better at working in extreme cold,

356
00:25:08,736 --> 00:25:11,555
they’ll become less and less necessary.

357
00:25:11,555 --> 00:25:15,289
Resistive backup heat is just that - a backup.

358
00:25:15,289 --> 00:25:18,133
Keep that in mind as we continue with this discussion.

359
00:25:18,133 --> 00:25:22,947
Of course, we still need to plan for having that backup but, hot take

360
00:25:22,947 --> 00:25:32,140
20 kilowatts of heat strips is probably rarely necessary,
especially if we do insulation retrofits like we absolutely should.

361
00:25:32,140 --> 00:25:39,219
As a piece of anecdata, my mom and dad live in a pretty large four-bedroom ranch-style home that’s about 15 years old.

362
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Including the finished basement, they have 3,500 square feet of conditioned space.

363
00:25:44,251 --> 00:25:45,588
A decent chunk.

364
00:25:45,588 --> 00:25:50,793
And their house is all-electric, but for some silly reason they don't have a heat pump.

365
00:25:50,793 --> 00:25:58,928
They have entirely resistive heat, and what they call the “furnace” is really 
an extremely cheap air handler with a contactor for its blower motor

366
00:25:58,928 --> 00:26:01,571
and two beefy contactors for the heat strips.

367
00:26:01,571 --> 00:26:07,011
The thing's hilarious, it has no logic circuitry in it at all,
the thermostat is the only control mechanism

368
00:26:07,011 --> 00:26:11,933
and when it calls for heat there’s a big “THUNK”
and then the lights get a bit dimmer and it delights me in its crudeness!

369
00:26:12,716 --> 00:26:17,483
Anyway, the heat strips in their air handler
are indeed of the 20 kilowatt flavor.

370
00:26:17,483 --> 00:26:20,755
See, there’s two 10 kilowatt doodads in there.

371
00:26:20,755 --> 00:26:26,964
But even when it’s extremely cold outside,
their home has no trouble at all staying warm.

372
00:26:26,964 --> 00:26:35,827
Over this past Christmas it was stupid cold and pretty windy,
and on December 23rd it never even broke zero degrees Fahrenheit outside.

373
00:26:35,827 --> 00:26:43,538
Yet, even keeping the interior a comfortable 68 degrees, 
the thermostat only called for heat for 15 hours.

374
00:26:43,538 --> 00:26:48,919
Yes, that’s a lot, but clearly they’ve got a huge margin for error.

375
00:26:48,919 --> 00:26:54,279
They’d be completely fine and still have some margin left
with only 15 kW of heat strips.

376
00:26:54,701 --> 00:26:58,199
And as it turns out, that’s exactly what they have!

377
00:26:58,199 --> 00:27:05,825
Each 10 kW heat strip unit is actually made of two 5 kW heating elements, 
and one of them happens to be burnt out,

378
00:27:05,825 --> 00:27:08,826
meaning they really only have 15 kW

379
00:27:08,826 --> 00:27:11,181
and that’s been the case for who knows how long.

380
00:27:11,181 --> 00:27:13,358
But wait! There’s less!

381
00:27:13,358 --> 00:27:19,132
Those heat strips are constantly cycling on and off thanks to a limit switch whenever the heat's running.

382
00:27:19,132 --> 00:27:27,729
I don’t know if that’s normal behavior or if their blower speed is set too low or something but each one is only on about ⅔ of the time.

383
00:27:27,729 --> 00:27:33,477
So in reality, their home only has ⅔ of ¾ of 20 kW.

384
00:27:33,477 --> 00:27:35,950
Or 10 kW of heat output.

385
00:27:35,950 --> 00:27:42,815
And that 10 kW was only needed for 15 of 24 hours on an extremely cold day.

386
00:27:42,815 --> 00:27:47,863
Yeah, their home is fairly new and well-insulated,
but it’s also no passive house.

387
00:27:47,863 --> 00:27:53,146
They’ve got old-fashioned double-hung windows everywhere
and other than some extra attic insulation,

388
00:27:53,146 --> 00:27:56,722
the house is basically just built to the code minimums of the day.

389
00:27:56,722 --> 00:28:03,642
Yet we know exactly how much heat output it actually needs to stay warm in the coldest weather we get,

390
00:28:03,642 --> 00:28:05,744
and it’s nowhere near 20 kW.

391
00:28:05,744 --> 00:28:08,964
It’s actually more like… six or eight tops.

392
00:28:08,964 --> 00:28:14,460
By the way, this sort of data-logging 
is a really valuable thing smart thermostats provide.

393
00:28:14,460 --> 00:28:18,368
You can use it to find out just how oversized your heating system is,

394
00:28:18,368 --> 00:28:22,046
which around here they almost always seem to be by a factor of 2.

395
00:28:22,046 --> 00:28:25,116
But anyway, circling back to the smart breaker panel,

396
00:28:25,116 --> 00:28:28,775
even if you truly need some big ol’ heat strips for your home

397
00:28:28,775 --> 00:28:34,488
(which again, I cannot stress this enough, 
that  should only ever be necessary on rare occasions)

398
00:28:34,488 --> 00:28:38,945
Well, we can still manage that load so long as we’re clever about it.

399
00:28:38,945 --> 00:28:46,708
Say we had 15 kw of heat strips and the smart breaker panel that could power-limit them in chunks of 5 kilowatts.

400
00:28:46,708 --> 00:28:53,210
That would mean that should you need to,
you can throttle the heat output rather than just shut it off entirely.

401
00:28:53,210 --> 00:28:58,067
So when other loads like the water heater or stove threaten to push you over 100A,

402
00:28:58,067 --> 00:29:04,761
we can just knock off 20A from the air handler which will reduce output slightly but still provide you with heat.

403
00:29:04,761 --> 00:29:09,639
And of course when those other loads disappear,
we can send the full amount back to the air handler.

404
00:29:10,480 --> 00:29:16,257
We like to pretend 100A is not a lot of power but folks - it really is.

405
00:29:16,257 --> 00:29:18,322
We just have to use it wisely.

406
00:29:18,322 --> 00:29:26,159
So far, I’ve been talking about what homes that currently use forced-air furnaces and central air conditioning will need to do to electrify themselves.

407
00:29:26,159 --> 00:29:30,655
That’s a huge amount of housing here, but it’s definitely not universal.

408
00:29:30,655 --> 00:29:37,673
You might have a boiler which makes water hot and pumps that around to radiators throughout your home or perhaps an in-floor heating system,

409
00:29:37,673 --> 00:29:42,053
and that might also produce domestic hot water for bathing, too.

410
00:29:42,053 --> 00:29:47,444
There are heat pumps which are designed to replace boilers,
but they’ll be a bit more work.

411
00:29:47,444 --> 00:29:52,355
You’ll need to run a new circuit to an outdoor unit,
plus new plumbing and whatnot.

412
00:29:52,355 --> 00:30:00,620
And if that’s the situation you’re in, you may want to look into ductless mini-splits which can also provide cooling in the warm months.

413
00:30:00,620 --> 00:30:03,473
As far as what you’ll do for your backup emergency heat...

414
00:30:03,473 --> 00:30:05,634
ah, I’ll let you be creative.

415
00:30:05,634 --> 00:30:09,882
We’re pushing into half-hour territory but there’s still a lot more to talk about.

416
00:30:09,882 --> 00:30:16,270
So far I’ve discussed what it would take to swap your conventional gas stuff for conventional electric stuff,

417
00:30:16,270 --> 00:30:21,660
and how we can use energy management to make that possible with limited electrical supplies.

418
00:30:21,660 --> 00:30:23,753
But that’s still a lot of work.

419
00:30:23,753 --> 00:30:29,882
Thanks to the miracles of heat pumps and batteries, though, 
we can avoid much of that work.

420
00:30:29,882 --> 00:30:36,157
In part two, I’ll talk about heat pump water heaters, clothes dryers, and stoves with batteries.

421
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We’ll also discuss options for dealing with power outages.

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There will be a clicky thing popping up right about now which’ll take you there once it’s ready.

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But for now, thanks for watching.

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♫ divvied-up smooth jazz ♫

425
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Just those three devices pulled per…

426
00:30:57,200 --> 00:30:57,892
Nyyaaagh!

427
00:30:57,892 --> 00:30:59,237
But hang on a minute.

428
00:30:59,237 --> 00:31:00,472
But hang on.

429
00:31:00,472 --> 00:31:02,285
But hold your horses.

430
00:31:02,285 --> 00:31:03,442
But hang on, though.

431
00:31:03,442 --> 00:31:04,594
[laughs]

432
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OoohhhHHHHhHHHHHhhH

433
00:31:10,559 --> 00:31:13,626
OoohhhHHHHHHHhhH

434
00:31:13,626 --> 00:31:16,504
OoohhHHhHHHHHhhH

435
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Your HVAC system always takes priorit[eh]

436
00:31:19,783 --> 00:31:23,975
… why am I running out of vocalization before the end of “priority?”

437
00:31:23,975 --> 00:31:26,741
Your HVAC system always takes priorit[eh]

438
00:31:27,611 --> 00:31:28,852
Why is that happening?

439
00:31:29,577 --> 00:31:30,156
Priorit[eh]

440
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…thing we need to be doing is building envelope upgrades to reduce the need - 
should I keep that in?

441
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I’ll start over.

442
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So one of my favorite things about electricity is playing around with load limits and things like we've been talking about here.

443
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It's helpful not only in the individual home, but also to the broader grid.

444
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The more we can spread periods of high-demand out,
the easier managing everything becomes.

445
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There's a lot of....

446
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potential there.