Aren't these prohibitively expensive compared to natural gas?
(I've considered the same but I have gas service)
- An electric water heater is the only way to go truly "net zero"
- You can power it with solar panels
- Your gas company might have a high fixed charge (e.g. I pay $20/mo just for the hookup)
- Routing gas lines & exhaust can get expensive and quickly wipe out fuel savings
- Cutting gas service completely eliminates combustion concerns. No worries about combustion air, no carbon monoxide, etc.
- Electric might still be the service of the future; electric appliances are a bet on renewables
Now, a tankless electric can also get expensive if you wind up needing to upgrade your electric service. Which is why I ultimately went from tanked gas to tanked electric.
Typically electricity are the worst in places where this is a meaningful benefit to consumers because the state usually has policies about sourcing its electricity that take environmental impact into account in such a way that price is driven through the roof.
Paying a premium for green energy is the best thing states can do to discourage conversion from fossil fuels to electric power.
Actually, the whole water heating business seems to be like this. All kinds of way better tech than an old fashioned 82 AFUE open flue tanked, at really minor cost increases, but the cost of water heating in the first place just isn't that terribly high.
In the end the most significant cost savings on my water heater replacement project, turned out to be the space heating savings from closing the old atmospheric vent & combustion air vent.
I ended up going with an electric heat pump hot water tank.
I do have natural gas service, but I'd rather put my money into assets (solar panels) than consumables (utility services).
My custom house is almost complete and we only put a single 40 amp circuit in the garage. I've lived with an EV for a few years now. 40 amps is plenty. When we get two EVs, 40 amps will still be plenty. The garage is also close enough to the breaker box that we can run another 40 amp circuit if we need to.
You don't need both of your Teslas to go from 0 range to 300+ miles in two hours everyday. If you did that much driving you'd be running a taxi service.
In our case, the charger will be between both bays. Assuming that both EVs have 300 mile range, we won't need to charge both cars everyday. (Edit) I'm also assuming someone will come out with a 40-amp dual-car charger that will split the load between two cars when both are plugged in.
Anyway, I did ask about 400 amp service because I wanted to use tankless electric water heaters. What he told me is that he'd have to wire in a second panel and second meter.
At that point I decided that 200 amps was plenty.