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slaypuree

There's a rule banning gas water heaters in 2027 (www.baaqmd.gov)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/bayarea

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Just came across this new rule, via this article: https://www.sfchronicle.com/climate/article/california-electric-19563602.php

2027 is when they ban sale of new replacement gas water heaters.

They talk about a few solutions, like low voltage electric heaters, and load sharing plugs to share a dryer plug among the water heater and a electric dryer. So that could do it for a lot of people.
But I'd guess a surge in panel replacements will happen within the next 2 years.
Especially since new gas furnaces will be banned in 2029.

Also, obligatory Fuck PGE. We have higher rates than most of the rest of the world and it's all the fault of the corrupt PUC and PGE.

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[–] seaQueue 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

The century where electricity costs us 50-75¢/kWh (headed for $1/kWh by 2028-2030) and gas is significantly less expensive to use for heating.

Deregulation absolutely fucked California's energy markets and the PUC+PG&E are going to keep the deep dicking going as long as humanly possible.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Jesus it’s like $0.17/kWh here

[–] jewbacca117 6 points 3 weeks ago

Someones gotta pay for the wildfires PG&E caused and it aint gonna be the shareholders!

[–] seaQueue 1 points 3 weeks ago

It's anywhere between 45¢ and like 90¢? here at peak time of use rates. The rate increases past 25¢/kWh are almost entirely to pay off PG&E's wildfire liability after they committed fraud and used their transmission maintenance budget to pay dividends for 20+y.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Here in Sweden, gas is pretty much obsolete and not a lot of places even have the option of using gas. Afaik only really the old buildings in the big cities has gas.

Furnace heating is pretty rare in Sweden so we generally use electricity. Our grid is also very stable and renewable.

Average electricity prices including fees, taxes and all that was apparently between 0,17 EUR and 0,19 EUR per kWh in December 2023. Don't you guys have geothermal and heat pumps?

[–] seaQueue 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The majority of our generation here in CA is PV during daylight hours and nat. gas generation plants (plus the odd nuke plant here and there) to cover any shortages. We have some battery storage to convert that PV generation capacity into night time power but not nearly enough. We have very little geothermal or tidal generation here.

Most of the abusive cost of electricity here is PG&E offloading their $20B+ wildfire liability from 2015-2019 onto customers.

Every single home I've lived in since the late 90s has used nat gas for water and central heating. Electric is becoming popular over time but gas is still very common.