Great chart! Keep in mind that those numbers are cumulative (annual), not per event.

@Roy wrote:
> going all electric puts all of your eggs in one basket and thus makes your home less resilient to electric power outages.

When I lived in Charlotte (lots of trees = ice storm outages), I had no problem powering my 1999 12 SEER heat pump and submersible well pump with a portable 5.6 kW generator (not at the same time, although not at all hard to manage). I had natural gas service so water heating and cooking wasn’t an issue during a couple of extended outages we experienced.

Today’s high-seer right-sized heat pumps draw a lot less current and the inverter drive compressors virtually eliminate inrush current (a big deal when sizing a genset). And as Curt noted in his comment, today’s HPWH’s only draw a couple of amps. Likewise with today’s energy efficient refrigerators and LED lights. Lastly, a microwave oven plus a propane grille comfortably suffice for cooking.

Allison, you can operate a gas furnace with at lot smaller generator than is required for any type of electric heat. It takes a lot more generator capacity to operate an electric water heater compared to a gas water heater of any type too. Don’t get me wrong, I am a supporter of long-term electrification and have lived in several houses already that were fully electrified simply due to the unavailability of natural gas. However, going all electric puts all of your eggs in one basket and thus makes your home less resilient to electric power outages.

I have the common layout of water heater in the garage which is on the opposite side of the house from our master bathroom, so I get to spend a minute or two waiting for a hot shower each morning. I gave up on washing my hands with hot water. The irony is that I also have an encapsulated attic with a 15-foot peak height, so the water heater could have easily been put in the attic and shortened the runs to all of the fixtures. It would be a great place for a heat pump water heater too, especially if I needed the additional summer dehumidification, which I don’t.

You’re most welcome. BTW I have rigged my 2015 Prius with a deep cycle 12V AGM battery and an inverter to address the longer outage problem. A Prius is a very efficient generator, although in this configuration it only supplies 115V not 230V. Generation of 230V off the hybrid battery is possible but much more expensive.

Thanks for that link, framistat! Those are interesting data.

Half a day isn’t a big deal. You can certainly have enough water with an electric water heater for a few hours. Two to three days without electricity would be a problem, and a gas water heater (as long as it’s not tankless or power-vented) would keep you in hot water for the duration.

But living without electricity for all the other things you need it for would be a little dicey. You wouldn’t be able to heat the house even with a gas furnace because they use electricity for the blower. The solution for that would be either electrical storage or a generator, which could then power an electric water heater, too.

Good point. Frequency and duration depends on where you are. The more frequent
outages here average half a day, but they have been as long as two to three days.
Given that the grid is aging, climate is changing, old trees are falling… I would not
characterize longer outages as “extremely rare” as in general outages are becoming
more frequent. The HWH here is 14 years old.
https://www.cummins.com/news/2019/08/27/how-long-power-outage-each-state

@ronald, an on-demand pump doesn’t require a return loop (can use cold water line for the return since it only operates for under a minute in a typical installation). The pump costs more than a circulator — in addition to the control circuit, it has a much higher flow rate for fast response — but it avoids the losses incumbent in a recirc loop.