Solar and gas (as piped gas enjoyers) or time to go fully electric?
We have a 7 year old house with a 4.15kw PV system, no battery. Someone usually home during the day. We're trying to work out if it makes sense to stop having piped gas as the double daily charges are a pain and we know we're not making the most out of our solar, but we enjoy some aspects of our gas appliances. Have other people made the jump with similar barriers? Any advice?
Our piped gas is used for the stove top, infinity water heater and a double-sided fireplace.
We have heatpumps in the house for the bulk of our heating, but we do turn the gas fire on occasionally in winter because it's nice and we're paying the gas daily charge anyway. The double-sided fireplace really made us fall in love with our home. It's in a open plan area and gives it a nice ambiance. I haven't been able to find double sided electric alternatives, so I'm thinking we could just cut the gas and leave the unit in the medium term, or install a single sided electric one bit it would lose some of its appeal.
We love to cook and enjoy some aspects of gas cooking (specifically using our wok a lot and some non-induction friendly cookware). We appreciate that induction has benefits too, such as speed of boiling and much easier to clean up the stove. There's a neither-here-nor-there idea that we could get a hybrid stovetop which uses LPG bottles (bottles owned rather than rented) for one burner and induction on the other burners.
I suspect we'd be able to get an electric hot water system outside where the infinity system is and be able to put a lot of our currently exported solar power into that. I think it's slightly undersized for the house but it's not a big problem for us.
Any advice? We've worked out it'd cost a lot to convert everything to electric, especially the fireplace. And it will pay itself off eventually but by my very rough calculations it was over 10 years. The appliances are still working fine so not needing replacing yet in that respect. I've joked it'd be easier to get some more solar panels and a battery and cut off from the electricity grid instead!