Posting here rather than email to not be "spamming" folks.
The only thing I have left in my house that uses gas is my kitchen range, and I seldom use that anymore. I rely mostly on my instant pot and my microwave for cooking. My gas bill every month is about $24. It didn't seem to me like I was using that much gas, so I studied it up on my bill. Only about $5 of that $24 has actually been for gas. The other charges are fixed miscellaneous charges and taxes.
So I would like to not be using gas at all, and I am looking forward to the day when I call PSE up and tell them to come shut it off. I am in somewhat of a quandary however, and I would love to get other people’s thoughts. I've studied up on induction stoves, and they seem superior to either gas or traditional electric stoves in just about every regard. However, the least expensive decent induction stoves I can find are around $1500 and they go up from there. Plus I'm going to have to buy new pots and pans that will work on the induction stove. And what do I do with my old stove, the gas one? Send it to the landfill? Sell it on the used market to someone else who needs a stove? But then it would still just be being used to burn gas, so that doesn't seem that cool.
Looking at it just from a dollars spent perspective, I'd save $20 a month forever - the $20 I pay to PSE just for being there. So in about 7 years I'd recoup the cost for the stove from those savings. I'm guessing that the actual energy cost would be about the same using electricity.
I've thought about just buying a countertop induction “burner.” it seems like decent ones sell for a $100-$150. And I could get a countertop electric oven for the times I want to bake for about the same price. And just leave my old gas stove where it is and cut off my gas from PSE. Does seem like it would be a little awkward, and my countertop would certainly be getting more cluttered than it is.
So, thoughts on going forward? It seems like this kind of calculation shows up a lot in going electric. If someone has a gasoline car and transition to electric, what do they do with the gasoline car? I've got incandescent light bulbs in some of the outlets in my house. Do I replace them with LEDs and throw the incandescents away, or do I just wait until they burn out and replace the incandescent lights with LEDs? You get the quandary.
I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts. Help me decide what to do about my last gas appliance.
Love this creative idea about what to do with old ICE cars
and just reiterating the point that what to do with stuff that is CO2 emitting is an issue with industry too in a very big way. When they spend money on new CO2 infrastructure they want to get its full useful life before moving to something else.
Oh yes! Now I remember what ICE stands for. I see what you mean about removing or disabling the engines. I guess you might as well remove them to make more space & maybe they could be recycled somehow. Thank you!
Ice wasn’t really appropriate for other than vehicles, but short for internal combustion engine. The idea would be to make sure they were not back on the road emitting co2, but could be moved on rare occasions.