In New Jersey there is discussion of banning the installation of electric heat in new construction. This includes heat pumps with heating elements for extreme temps.
This one has me scratching my head because 30 years ago when my dad built his house, they were PAYING people to go total electric…
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"In New Jersey there is discussion of banning the installation of electric heat in new construction"
Interesting.......What's your source?
It was in the 11/5 edition of the Atlantic City Press. http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/newjersey/story/5675066p-5692783c.html
Edited 11/7/2005 8:00 pm ET by Soultrain
I saw the headlines this morning in the Press,didnt read the article though.I first thought they were only referring to baseboard electric heat.
mike
That is just plain rediculous! There may well come a day inmmy lifetime when electric is the most efficient way of delivering heat in th eresidence.
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It already is the best way here except wood . It beats any kind of gas on bills . Im talking about a heat pump with strip back up. Ive got several houses of differences I can proove it.
Tim
<well come a day inmmy lifetime when electric is the most efficient way of delivering heat in th eresidence.>I heard this on Paul Harvey today. The process may already be here.Was wonderin if anybody else has heard about this?http://www.blacklightpower.com/Having exactly solved the atom using physical laws for the first time, BlackLight is the primary mover in advancing applications of a new chemical process of releasing the latent energy of the hydrogen atom, the BlackLight Process.An ordinary hydrogen atom consists of an electron orbiting a proton. The BlackLight Process allows the electron to move closer to the proton, to which it is attracted, below the prior-known ground state. This generates power as heat, light, and plasma (a hot, glowing, ionized gas) with the formation of strong hydrogen products that are the basis of a vast class of new chemical compounds with broad commercial application.The energy released from this process is hundreds of times in excess of the energy required to start it. The primary fuel is hydrogen gas, which can be created inexpensively via electrolysis from water. Energy is released as heat and may be converted to electricity using known methods. The process is scalable from small, hand-held units to large, fire-box replacements in large central power stations.Rather than pollutants, the BlackLight Process releases heat, light, and valuable chemicals. The lower-energy atomic hydrogen products of the process can be used to form novel hydrino hydride compounds ("HHCs") which are proprietary to the company, and form a vast class of new chemistry. Alternatively, the product can be a new inert form of hydrogen gas that may serve in revolutionary applications such as the medium for a new high-energy laser. Since this gas is lighter than air, it may also be safely vented and allowed to diffuse into space.
I haven't seen that one, but where I am coming from is that aswe go through the oscillations of changing from one source to another - oil, wind, coal, natural gas, hydro, nuclear, etc, with one or anopther vying for dominance ande economics, and the potential for various home co-generation devices and fuel cells or geothermal, if all homes deliver the ehat in place with resistance electric, then the source can be endlessly modified to originate the btus according to national circumsance and local economics.What brought this to my mind is that our utility here has contracts with their supplier so the elec is a set price for X # of months. Now that oil has surged, there is speculation that electric heat might actually be cheaper than oil this year. That makes it more than likely that some people with oil heat will turn the thermostat low and sit near a radiant electric heater, and of course one or two of them will burn the house down doing so.
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Butch,I have been aware of Blacklight Power for several years. As far as I know, it is still not possible to buy any working device utilizing their vaunted technology. I hope it is real, but suspect a scam. Would love to be proven wrong!Bill
Unless the hydrogen atom has been reformulated since the last course I took in atomic physics, I would be a bit more than highly skeptical. However, it has been a couple of decades since I took that last course...
There is a website by a skeptics organization that discusses the Blacklight claims:
http://www.phact.org/e/blp.htm
Definitely sounds like pseudoscience to me. I invest heavily in the energy sector but that one won't get any of my $$$$$.
Here in Lake Placid, the village has a long term deal with Niagara Mohawk that gives us ridiculously low rates in the 4 to 6 cents range. Thus, everyone heats with electric.
Most of it is resistance baseboards. The high end work, which is about all that is going on, has clients that prefer hydronic in-floor, and we used to be able to heat the water with electric boilers.
The building department has banned the use of electric boilers now. You can still heat a new house with resistance baseboards, but if you want hydronic, you need to burn oil or LP gas.
The reason for the electric boiler ban was that units of that type create a much larger amperage draw jump when firing on, when compared to a house full of baseboards, with a t-stat in every room. Even in a ten-zone system, any one zone calling for heat causes all the elements of the boiler to go on. A baseboard-heated house with 10 t-stats will never have all ten calling for power at the same moment. Our local substation was seeing too much surging, and thus, it was bye-bye to those efficient little Argos and their like.
Too bad they can't let the m,arket handle the problem instead of mucking things up with controls. That led to disaster in California.
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No doubt. Even though the vast majority of homes in NJ are heated with oil & natural gas, it helps to keep their prices in check if people have the option to choose electric.
My dad's total utility bills in the winter are comparable to those heated with gas/oil/propane - especially since electrical rates go down in the winter.
Like I said, I don't get their thinking, because my dad got credits since he built his house total electric.
"Too bad they can't let the m,arket handle the problem instead of mucking things up with controls. That led to disaster in California."Not completely true. Part of California's problem came from ENRON, which happened partly due to a lack of controls. Also, remember the big electric outage a couple of summers ago (started in NE Ohio)? My father (a professor of electrical engineering) was the professional consultant for the national newspaper syndicates about that. He said that since the electric companies have had reduced controls, they've cut staff to fatten their bottom lines. Professional engineers and testing procedures have been steadily reduced over the years so that people without experience have been filling in and cutting corners. That whole scenario could have been avoided had they run simple tests to locate problem areas. It was a catastrophe waiting to happen, and there'll likely be more to come.Agree with the issue about eliminating electric heat in NJ though. This seems like the opposite extreme of too much interference. And if gas prices continue to rise, everybody gets screwed. Seems like a knee-jerk response to the whole California situation.
Lack of control? California has stringent price controls on energy providers.
True. But that wasn't what caused the outage. It was poor management and an understanding of how much electricity the state required. And ENRON was a debacle unto itself.
The Enron problem was lack of control over the internal accounting procedures that reported racking up false profits - not lack of control ovcer the utility delivery
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It runs deeper than that and goes further back than what you havve reported, and all due respect to your father, his is the view of an engineer rather than a manager overseeing supply. I lost a little money in Enron so I had to study to find out why and avoid repeating the error.Anyway, the thing that made Enron possible was that CA put price controls in place. That meant that no utility company was going to invest in generation plants in that state since they were gauranteed to lose money in the venture. The loophole was that power could be purchased regionally from outside.Entree Enron.So when it folded, things got critical, but the scenario for this was created by the state in the first place. Anytime you remove the profit motive from the capitalistic system, you get less of a thing. Same situation exists now re vacines. The govt took over the supply system and became purchasing agent in a misguided effort to amke it available at lower prices to more children.In the process, they decreed that the companies would sell it to them at govt determined prices. With almost no profit in the formula, a lot of companies backed away from developing or manufacturing vacines. So now all of a sudden, everyone is wondering why they can't get the anticipated supplies needed.Govt manipulation of the supply/demand formula almost always fails due to unintended consequences and zero-sum assumptions
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"Anyway, the thing that made Enron possible was that CA put price controls in place. That meant that no utility company was going to invest in generation plants in that state since they were gauranteed to lose money in the venture. The loophole was that power could be purchased regionally from outside."
Not to mention that it would be next to impossible to jump through all the hoops to actually build a power plant in CA...
"Anytime you remove the profit motive from the capitalistic system, you get less of a thing."Agreed. Stupid of CA to let that happen. At the same time, there needs to be a balance of power/checks and balances. The opposite extreme happened during the blackout. Less regulations took the situation out of the hands of professionals, and put it in the hands of the business people. To them, a lot of the engineers (all high-salary people) look like they're just sitting around soaking up $$$. But they're maintaining the system and making sure it works. Much like a pharmacist. Lots of schooling, rigid examinations, and in the end . . . they count pills all day. The business people just found other people to count the pills for cheap, but nobody really understood what the pills did.Don't think ENRON contributed anything to the blackout. But both situations are excellent examples (from both ends) of how one-sided thinking can have catastrophic consequences.
Edited 11/9/2005 12:51 pm ET by draftguy
CA's idea of "deregulation" is hardly that. Here is an article by Thomas Sowell addressing that entire situation. About half way through he addresses the notion that CA's utilities were under-regulated.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell012901.asp
The real issue was that the utility companies were heavily regulated by the state, but the out of state suppliers were not. This meant that utility companies had to eat the cost of providing energy that was obtained from out of state suppliers. When you figure in that CA pretty much prohibits building power plants (not explicitly, but it would be pretty much impossible to build one anywhere in the state since the state gov't is held captive by the extreme left environmental movement)*
*Not to be confused with normal people who are have reasonable concern for the environment.
Edited 11/9/2005 12:59 pm ET by Soultrain
Edited 11/9/2005 12:59 pm ET by Soultrain
Read the article (thanks). Don't necessarily agree with all of it, but very convincing points that CA screwed itself by setting price controls. Sowell makes a comparison to municipal transportation:"Municipal transit companies were once privately owned but political regulation kept their fares too low for these businesses to survive. So buses, subways and trolleys ended up being taken over and run by government in city after city -- and not run as well."But what's not mentioned is that automobile manufacturers moved in and destroyed the city transportation systems (which were, in fact, very effective), resulting in the chaotic freeway systems and reliance on the car in California. Every urban planner in the country knows this story by heart.Electric shortages. Water shortages. People building on fault lines, mountain sides prone to mud slides, areas prone to brush fires. Ridiculous real estate costs. No doubt . . . CA has a lot of problems with plenty of blame to go around.
Good pointsI did not intend to denigrate Dad, just keeping the testimony in perspective
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> Stupid of CA to let that happen.
Did you see the news on the special election we had yesterday? We've really cornered the market on stupid.
-- J.S.
"Too bad they can't let the m,arket handle the problem instead of mucking things up with controls. That led to disaster in California."
That's the important point. Governments have a very poor record of picking winners and losers.
At one time, Electricity was picked as a "winner", and there were all sorts of incentives offered for folks to use electricity for heating. The nation had a huge overcapicity in generation capabilities because of government incentives to overinvest in generation. Then something in the collective "wisdom" determined that this was a bad idea when generating capacity was consumed, and price controls could not hold. Of course it was the "price controls" that lead to high consumption, and less incentive to increase supply to keep up.
Then Natural Gas was picked as a winner. Generous subsidies were offered to entice people to convert their heating systems to gas and massive subsidies were offered up to build an enormous power generation capacity using natural gas. Price controls kept demand high (and reduced incentive to increase supply), and now there is a scary shortage coming into this winter. Many of those expensive gas powerplants have been mothballed for a decade, and even more will be shut off this winter in an effort to prevent supply shocks.
Now to prove that government is too stupid to learn, Congress is launching an inquisition on Oil Companies because they made (gasp!) profits after more than a decade of scant margins. "Windfall taxes" would have the same affect as price controls, since they would provide a counterincentive to invest in increasing supply. Why invest if your profits are going to be confiscated anyways? This could ultimately lead to shortages like the price controls of 1973-74 and 1978-79. The reason we did not run out of gasoline post Katrina is because prices were allowed to rise high enough to reduce demand, and put supplies back in balance.
I think you are right that electricity could come out a winner again. Small distributed generation devices may overcome the central problem with electricity, which is high distribution losses. Large consumers like refrigeration warehouses and data centers already switch to efficient natural gas generators on "peak demand" days. These generators are actually more efficient than the centralized natural gas powerplants, since the line losses are so bad. Many only tie into the grid in the first place because their wholesale pricing agreements are below market, meaning residential users subsidize them. Wind farms and solar are enjoying a resurgence. If the government would stop trying to pick "winners" by regulating and subsidizing, then simply let the market decide, the energy "problem" will work itself out.
Fascinating thread here.Although it's absolutely true that government regulation is often counterproductive, produces unforseen and unintended consequences, and is sometimes just plain stupid, I'm surprised at how often people invoke the mantra of free markets as the solution when there's so many examples of how "letting the market take care of things" fails miserably. To me the ultimate example is the airline industry. Now it's a complicated situation, no doubt, but during the twenty-odd years since the airlines were deregulated service has deteriorated greatly, the carriers and especially their employees have suffered pretty severely, and several airlines have pleaded with the government to bail them out.While I'm no expert in the California energy situation, it seems a little simplistic to blame it all on the state, which certainly played a part.Left to its own devices, in theory, the market should produce the greatest efficiencies and the "invisible hand" of capitalism that Adam Smith wrote about should improve things generally. But in actual practice unbridled capitalism doesn't necessarily work that way, as history has shown.OK, I'm partly being devil's advocate here--I don't care for government regulation any more than the next person--but simply letting market forces direct things doesn't always work for the common good of society.As far as electricity for heat, let's bracket the question of cost for a minute and ask instead about efficiency. How does electricity stack up to other fuels in terms of BTUs produced per unit of energy? My impression is that electric heat is relatively inefficient, that it takes more overall energy to generate a given amount of heat with electricity than with, say, oil or wood.
Edited 11/14/2005 10:01 pm ET by Megunticook
True that there is energy lost in the process of delivering heat energy via electrical power lines. I was talking in my speculative mood about the potential cost efficiency rather than strictly energy efficiency.As for you summary point on market efficiency, capitalism is never intended to provide for the common good. That is socialism tha taims at that target.
But it is when capitalism works well, is serves the greatest number of individuals within that greater group called common. in serviing all those many individuals, the common good is served. walmart is an example of that point. I am no fan of Walmart overall, but they seerve the greatest number of people, with the lowest prices, in an efficient manner that also provides the greatest number of jobs in some world economies wheere those jobs might otherwise be non-existant.
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As for you summary point on market efficiency, capitalism is never intended to provide for the common good. That is socialism tha taims at that target. But it is when capitalism works well, is serves the greatest number of individuals within that greater group called common
Good point, I think we actually agree there since when I said "common good" I was thinking in terms of the greatest good for the greatest number of people, not guaranteed equality for all. It's been a while since I read Adam Smith, but here's how he put it, talking about the individual in the free market economy: "By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society."
I would emphasize your qualifier, "WHEN capitalism works well," because that's precisely the point I was making: it doesn't always play out as well in reality as it does in the abstract. When it does work, it's great. And in fact it's pretty clear that capitalism has come to be the predominant mode of economy in the world because, by and large, it works better than anything else.
But it's important to acknowledge the free market's limitations, the dangers it presents, and to concede that there needs to be some mediation at times.
Now banning the installation of electric heating systems is a dumb form of mediation. And you're right, it's typical of a governing body to not think carefully about the problem they're addressing and how their interference may make things worse, or cause even more problems. But that's not to say that simply letting the energy industry run free of regulatory oversight is the answer. That may be the answer in some circumstances, but not across the board.
I happen to think that the government should be doing a lot more to create incentives for energy efficiency. In other words, rather than taking a regulatory approach most of the time, the emphasis should be on doing things like offering more and greater tax breaks to companies developing technologies and practices that improve efficiency, reduce environmental costs, and reduce our dependence on petroleum (that last one is our nation's achilles heel).
In other words, rather than trying to compel an industry to do something, try to make it attractive from a business standpoint. That's one way of mediating in a free market that, if done wisely, can help accomplish the overall goal of promoting everyone's interest.
BTW, your example of Walmart is excellent both in terms of illustrating the free market's phenomenal potential for efficiency (did you notice how quickly WalMart responded to Katrina with supplies in comparison with the bumbling FEMA?) and the dangers. Part of Wal-mart's fantastic success has come with the price of some pretty dubious handling of their employees--there's enough stories out there (both in the local and national media) of cutting costs at the expense of their workforce (trying to minimize benefits, shaving timecards, etc.). For the shareholders and consumers, Wal-mart's been a boon--for many of the people who work in the stores, and for the small-town merchants who get squeezed out by Wal-Mart, it hasn't been so great.
Geez, who put a nickle in me? Sorry to be such a windbag. I just find these issues are on my mind a lot and it helps me clarify my understanding to discuss them with other intelligent folks out there.
Edited 11/15/2005 9:44 am ET by Megunticook
Since de-regulation, it's been easy to get cheap flights. The airlines crying for gov't help are the ones that are poorly run. Businesses that do the best job of meeting their customers needs are the ones that succeed.
Re: "Since de-regulation, it's been easy to get cheap flights."Given that airlines are one of the most heavily subsidized industries going the flights ought to be free. Airports, air traffic control, security, fuel prices, the burdens of noise, water, air and associated fouling of the land by the necessary aircraft fueling, maintenance and operation. All of these are heavily subsidized by the taxpayers. The airlines contribute but their's is a fraction of the burden. Given the real cost of flight simple fact is very few people should be able to fly very often. Simply put from a simple cost study of the simple physics and mechanics of aircraft operation if the average citizen is going to fly the flight has to be subsidized. Of course security is now the greatest burden. Those national guard troops, scanners, screeners and fighters standing by are not cheap. They add nothing to make the airlines any safer or more secure, all eye candy, but they make people feel good so the folks who own airlines can make their money. If the public needs reassurance to fly let the airlines pay for skycops, screeners and scanners out of their own pocket. If the public doesn't feel safe they can take a train, car or walk. Amtrack, Detroit and shoe makers will be glad to pick up the slack.Simply put if there was a real free market, with only a nod to safety, wouldn't do to have airliners falling out of the sky, and the airlines had to collectively pay for a national system of RADAR, air traffic control and pay for security and build airports none of the airlines would exist. Look into history of air transportation. All the first successful aircraft were built for the government. First commercial flights were organized and paid for the government to fly mail around the country. Passenger service started as a space-available system on mail flights. The airlines wouldn't exist if the US government hadn't stepped in to organize the business and make sure they could make a profit. The same is true of the oil business and every other major industry. Simply put there is no major industry which has not been created, nurtured, subsidized or been kept in working order by regulation at some time in its history. Private industry keeps crowing about how it is independent but it simply isn't. Major industries and corporations couldn't survive without the state, federal and local governments protecting and spoon feeding them. Even the regulations they so often complain about are largely designed to keep them operating long term.Simply put the 'invisible hand' and idealized economics textbook capitalism doesn't work for any system larger than a couple of lemonade stands. Adam Smith wasn't wrong, any more than Copernicus was wrong drawing nice neat concentric circles as orbits, but economics is not a simple linear system. Given even a simple situation the results become chaotic and inefficient in a very short time. As a couple of recent Nobel Prizes pointed out business is not as simple as Smith predicted.Differences in information cause markets to swing wildly and economic efficiencies get loss because there are no fair deals if both parties don't have equally powerful knowledge bases, but not necessarily the same information, about the product being sold. On the other end the more recent award dealing with game theory shows that given time competitors don't compete they collude. Even give a situation as drastic as war commonalities of desire and benefit, even without conscious communication or agreement, will shape the conflict so that both sides benefit. This is even more apparent in business where communications between companies is common. Where competitors share trade associations and employees from one business can easily be hired by another.Most of this thread has been simplistic mouthing of right-wing rhetoric and platitudes that have nothing to do with reality. It is right up there with the story that gas prices went up because we haven't built any refineries. As if the number of refineries has much to do with gas supply. Refineries are not like plastic Monopoly pieces. They are not one size producing X number of gallons of gas each. And the reason more refineries haven't been built has little to do with environmental regulation and NIMBY protestations by people. Refineries come in many sizes from tiny ones you can pretty much fit on the back of a semi to plants measures in acres. And all of them share one commonality: It's almost always cheaper and more efficient to expand an existing plant than to build a new one. So sure we haven't' built a new refinery in decades. Big deal. We have been expanding, modernizing and making more efficient the ones that are already there.Similarly the electrical industry wants to paint a picture of regulation being the root of the problem but it was deregulation that started it in the first place. Had all the electrical plants in California been municipally operated utilities, totally controlled locally and buying or producing power for their own local needs and not for-profit businesses at all, there would have been no crisis. Dirty little secret, with all due respect to the party line views and propaganda of Sowell, the right-wing mouthpiece and for-hire political hack, municipal power companies have a long history of being cost effective and quite adequate to local needs.
Since de-regulation, it's been easy to get cheap flights
That's very true. The actual cost of flying, adjusted for inflation, has gone way, way down.
But that fact alone doesn't vindicate deregulation. If deregulation had worked, the poorly run companies wouldn't have survived and the smart, efficient ones like Southwest would be doing well. Service would be good, and the pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, etc. would enjoy well-paying, secure jobs with good benefits. I'd say we're pretty far from that and the market isn't getting us anywhere nearer.
Edited 11/15/2005 9:45 am ET by Megunticook
"While I'm no expert in the California energy situation, it seems a little simplistic to blame it all on the state, which certainly played a part."
Then, who would say, played the other parts?
The citizens of California cetainly played a large part. But, the primary fault in the shortage of electricity in California shortly after the deregulation of the electrical power supply utility, is the way (or truthfully, the lack of) deregulation was planned. Working for a large electric utility at the time, that was soon to be entering a deregulated market, I watched the California debacle closely.
Some would blame Enron, which is wrong. Enron is guilty of many poor practices, but that company never produced any electrical power and was never paid to do so.
The citizens of California chose to force the closure of one of the, if not the single largest power plants in the region. They did this because it was powered by nuclear fission.
The legislators, that wrote the law implementing deregulation, naively believed that by forcing an open market that many companies would rush in to fill the void of missing power production and do so at a competive rate. As we all witnessed, that was wishful thinking. Faced with competition, the "big boys", that previously held production in reserve of older and many times very inefficient plants, dumped that burden as the law allowed, and were no longer responsible for maintaining the reserve. So they didn't and it wasn't there.
There are more details than that listed above, but that in a nutshell, is what caused the shortage in California.
The citizens of California cetainly played a large part. But, the primary fault in the shortage of electricity in California shortly after the deregulation of the electrical power supply utility, is the way (or truthfully, the lack of) deregulation was planned.
OK, you certainly know more about the situation than I do. Clearly the state's attempt at deregulation was completely misguided. But let's say a true deregulated energy industry had been allowed to take its course. . .do you think there would've been no supply problems?
Ronald Reagan said in his first inaugural address that "government is the problem, not the solution." That sentiment has become such a predominant ideology--with some justification, granted, but when it becomes an inflexible dogma I think we get in trouble.
You have hit on a fatal flaw of completely deregulating certain industries. I do not believe there is a competent business manager that would ever plan to meet the worst case supply scenario, at a loss of competitive edge, unless they are able to sell at a premium during periods of extreme demand. Commercial, viable storage of their product, on a lrage enough scale to be of use, has yet to be acheived; you cannot realistically warehouse electricity.
If you were to consider certain products/services as critical in nature, to the point that the public well being could be jeopordized by allowing only market forces to control a chain of supply, then the decision should be made to safeguard that supply and to maintain some level of regulation over it. We have to chose one or the other.
The consequences of the choices made prior to these events were not completely known and if they were known, not communicated or ignored. The general consensus was that now it would be fair. PG&E has been getting rich and now the tables will be turned. There was some vindictiveness in the legislation and in the public mindset that further blinded people to the very real potential of shortages. The contingencies were woefully inadequate and very poorly thought through.
People (consumers) could be allowed, and in some cases are, select their rate structure based on peak demand. If you pay more all the time, you get power all the time, if you so choose. If you wish to pay less (or can only afford to pay less) you have to do without at peak demand periods. You contract for the power, the power company is obligated to provide the power as in any other legal contract.
so which politicians brother-in law works for the gas or oil company?
No doubt. Since when does restricting consumer choice ever help anyone?
Every politician's bil works for an oil company! Their official position? Bagman.
The only homes in NJ that I've seen being built with electric heat are the low-dollar "retirement communities". The builder saves on bringing gas service in, and sets each room up with a separate t-stat to control the length of baseboard in that room (which allows the owners to only heat the rooms they occupy).
It seems like it wouldn't be that cost effective to me, since you're already installing central AC, which would just require a gas-fired furnace inline for heat (rather than all the BB), but that's the way the low-buck stuff in South Jersey has been done for the past 30 years. My mother has been looking to buy one of those units, and has been trying to find one with gas forced-air heating- it's almost impossible without stepping into the $300-400k range.
Bob
I think zoning is one of the main appeals of electric baseboard. You can zone forced air & other heating systems, but zoned electric is simple.
In my neck of the woods they still do pay you to go electric.
If you sign a contract with the electric company to go all electric and foreswear all fossil fuels, you can even get a one full percent reduction on your mortgage interest rate. A pretty substantial incentive.
Would've thought Japan would favor electric over gas. True? Don't they use nuclear reactors for some of their plants?