Guest post by Mark and Nicole Kresowik, “on behalf of our kids!”
We cut the cord with gas in May 2025, and now Pepco pays us! How? By switching all our appliances to efficient electric versions and installing solar panels on our rowhouse roof and detached garage. That’s the short answer, but it took hard work to get there, so we want to share our story to help make it easier for others. Here it goes!
Why We Electrified: Health First, Savings Second
First, why did we electrify? The financial benefits are significant, but they weren’t our biggest motivator. Health and safety were #1 – we had just moved into a new home for our growing family, and we didn’t want our kids breathing polluted indoor air, at risk from carbon monoxide poisoning or an explosion from a leaking gas line, or burns from the open fire on a gas stove. Adding solar panels was a no-brainer, allowing us to use the free energy of the sun to power our home and share the extra back to the grid. Good for the planet, good for our family, and good for our pocketbook – win-win-win.
Step One: The Energy Audit
The goal was clear, but the path for how to get there was not – and it turns out there are a LOT of decisions to make when you decide to go all-electric, especially in an old house with major gas appliances – stove, water heater, and furnace. Our hardest decision was how to get started, so we decided to do an ‘energy audit’ to identify where we were wasting energy (think leaky windows and poor insulation), how to reduce the waste, and give us a roadmap and cost estimates for the rest of our electrification journey. We used a tax credit to offset the cost of the audit. While that is going away at the end of 2025, all of the rebates from the DC SEU will still be around for now.
Making a Plan (and Discovering a Dangerous Oven)
The energy audit helped us do a basic but crucial thing: make a plan! We learned that our insulation was surprisingly good, our furnace was in decent shape, but our water heater was nearing end-of-life and our gas oven was dangerously unsafe. The obvious gas smell had been an indicator, but watching the pollution meter go up and up and up, until even the engineer recommended we stop the test, open the windows, and go outside – we never turned that oven on again. Replacing that oven became step #1. Immediately, we used a toaster oven for baking, bought a $50 induction hot plate from IKEA, and had a plumber cap the gas line in the kitchen. But that wasn’t a long-term solution, especially because Mark LOVES to cook. So we decided to move the plan forward in stages.
The Panel Upgrade and First Major Replacements
We decided to replace the stove and water heater first. White it was certainly possible to electrify everything with our 150 amp service and the few remaining fuse slots in our electric panel – or we considered a smart panel – we decided it was cheapest and easiest to simply upgrade our panel to 200 amps and get more slots. There’s a rebate from the DC SEU for that too, and pretty much everything else we did. Fortunately we already had the wiring for the induction stove, but we made sure the circuits and shutoff switches for the heat pump and electric vehicle charging were installed too, so that all we would have to do was put in the other appliances when we were ready for that.
Going Solar
When the panel upgrade, wiring, and heat pump water heater (we got an AO Smith model with a CTA-2045 port for controlling it in the future) were finished thanks to EDGE Energy, we promptly bought our induction stove from Costco (rebates available now, plus if you use a Costco credit card, you get an extra two years on the warranty for a total of four!) and started the process of putting solar on our roofs. We highly recommend the Switch Together partnership with Solar United Neighbors for the best prices, benefits (discounts on both the panels and the brokerage fee through SolSystems for selling renewable energy credits), and ease of the process. Solar Solution was our contractor and they were very helpful. We also replaced our roofs before the panels went on, with Complete Roofing Solutions.
The Final Piece: Our Heat Pump
When our solar turned on at the end of 2024 we thought we might be done for the next few years. But three things moved us to accelerate replacing the furnace and air conditioning with a heat pump: a) paying hundreds of dollars annually to the gas company, especially when we already weren’t using any gas for half the year; b) the very real threat of losing the $2,000 federal tax credit; and c) the very helpful rebates from the DC SEU. So the final piece fell into place, and EDGE Energy installed our 3-ton Bosch variable speed cold climate ducted heat pump, smart thermostat, and media filter this summer. The efficiency difference has been amazing, and our home has stayed perfectly comfortable through the coldest weather we’ve had this winter.
The Results: Safer, Cleaner, and Cash-Positive
The best part? Less than two years after moving in there is no more gas pollution coming into our home, no gas bill, and we are producing more solar than we’re using with our efficient appliances. Our home is safer and more comfortable, and we have a better cooking (and cleaning!) experience. The upfront investment was significant, but we reduced that total cost by more than a third with rebates and tax credits, and we have new roofs and appliances. With our negative energy bills and solar credits we’ll pay that back at least a decade before we even think about needing appliance replacements or moving, and our home will be much more valuable if and when we do. We hope this blog – and Electrify DC – helps you make that same journey.