The Energy Show · EV Charging with Tom McCalmont By 2035 all new cars in California will be electric. It’s an achievable goal based on lower operating costs and rapid price declines for new EVs. But the current per kwh costs of EV charging continue to increase — and we continue to be woefully short of necessary EV charging infrastructure. I predict a massive backlash against expensive and inconvenient EV charging. Our EV deployment goals are likely to fail. Miserably. The reason is simple: our EV charging paradigm is based on utility profit maximization as they take over the corner filling s ..read more

The Energy Show · Inside Scoop About Heat Pumps for Your House If you can answer these three basic questions, then don’t bother listening to this podcast. The questions are tricky, so if you’re the least bit uncertain I suggest you listen to this week’s riveting Energy Show episode. How can a heat pump be 300% efficient? Are gas furnaces still the most popular new heating system? Can you get an $8,000 IRA rebate and $2,000 Federal Tax Credit for a heat pump installation in 2023? First, we’ll delve into the way a heat pump HVAC system works. In a nutshell, a heat pump is an air conditioner o ..read more

The Energy Show · Electrical Upgrades for Home Electrification There is one thing for certain as you electrify your house. You’ll need more electricity. Duh! But getting more electricity from the street to your house is not easy. Bizarrely, it often takes longer to do these electrical upgrades than it does to install your new all electric appliances. When — not if — your old gas hot water heater dies, you don’t want to wait months for a new 240 volt circuit for that new super-efficient electric heat pump water heater. Nor do you want to delay the installation of your new heat pump HVAC system ..read more

 The Energy Show · IRA Incentives What’s Really Available Today? The Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, became law in August 2022. It’s packed with incentives across the entire value chain, including domestic manufacturing, energy-efficient products, and clean saving energy. But these fantastic incentives do not yet match the realities of what you can get today for your electrification project. The table below shows the most significant IRA electrification incentives that are available to homeowners in 2023, as well as pending IRA incentives in 2024. Many utilities, counties and cities also hav ..read more

The Energy Show · How To Select The Best Home Battery Batteries were everywhere at September’s RE+ Conference in Vegas. I counted over 100 different battery company and system vendors. It was more of a battery and solar tracker show than a solar show — demonstrating the rapid evolution of these clean energy technologies. But out of a hundred batteries on the show floor, there are only half a dozen that I would recommend to homeowners. Home battery systems should provide reliable backup power during a blackout, and also generate utility bill savings. The vast majority of batteries I saw on the ..read more

 The Energy Show · 54% of New Electricity Is From Solar – You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet Proving the solar skeptics wrong, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) now expects that utilities will add 54.5 Gigawatts (GW) of solar generation capacity in 2023. And this capacity does not include 6.4 GW of residential installations and 1.7 GW of commercial installations expected in 2023. SIDEBAR: a Gigawatt is a billion watts of power. In 1955 the eminent Dr. Emmett Brown stated that the only power source capable of generating 1.21 GW is a bolt of lightning. Obviously things have changed in t ..read more

 The Energy Show · Solar and Storage Under New California Electric Rates HEADLINE: Higher Electric Rates and More Blackouts   Unfortunately, this is the new normal for most of the U.S. In other words: SNAFU This situation will not change. It’s a little-known fact that utilities use our money to influence politicians to maintain their monopoly. To the tune of $18m in California just in 2022. Government regulators are supposed to ensure that utilities provide inexpensive, reliable and safe power. However, this poorly regulated capitalism is not working. Just look at your electric bills ove ..read more

 The Energy Show · Biggest Electrification Roadblock is Your Utility Our society is moving rapidly towards electrification. Building electrification is good for the climate, good for our health, and good for our economy. We’ll all be using more electricity — it’s inevitable. Luckily, using all this extra electricity for our heating and our cars is inexpensive when you get it from rooftop solar and storage. But utilities have a monopoly on electricity distribution. They’re rubbing their greedy hands together like Montgomery Burns, safe in the knowledge that as long as their monopoly holds, pe ..read more

The Energy Show · DIY Home Electrification Measures On this week’s Energy Show we’re talking about the first steps toward your home electrification project. What I call the Low Hanging Fruit. These are easy and cheap energy efficiency measures — most of which you can do yourself (DIY) or do not require any special contractors. Many people recommend starting with an energy audit of your home. However, unless you’re working with a local energy auditor that knows your local conditions and incentives down to the city level, the standard energy audit recommendations are almost always wrong or out ..read more

 The Energy Show · Heat Pump Systems with Dennis Stinson of Fujitsu More heat pump systems were sold in 2022 than gas furnaces. And that was before the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) kicked in, which provides an $8,000 rebate for most heat pump installations — on top of a $2,000 federal tax credit and city/county incentives that can exceed $3,000. Heat pump systems are cleaner, more efficient and less expensive than most conventional gas furnaces and air conditioners. But the variety in heat pump system configurations, efficiency, and costs is enough to make even a geeky engineer’s head spin w ..read more