Julia and Jeff Switch to Induction Cooking

Neighborhood: Eckington, Washington DC

Building type: Row home

Square footage: 2400

Year built: 1905

Yearly solar production: 9 MWh

Projects: solar, water heater, cooktop/range

Products: GE stove, model PHS700AYFS from Lowes paid $1,400 including tax, installation and haul away

Contractors: Evolution Electrical LLC installed the new electrical circuit, Lowes did the installation of the new stove and hauled away the gas stove

 

Incentives: $800 for gas to induction conversion + $400 for adding an electrical circuit by DCSEU

Successes: scoring a Memorial Day sale on the induction range, cooler, healthier kitchen

Lessons learned: not running electrical to the kitchen when given the option, not capping the gas line before Lowes delivered the unit

 

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Over the past few years we’ve been slowly electrifying our DC row house. Very recently we finally got to the stove. We switched out our gas range for a induction one, and it’s pretty great! It’s cliché, but the induction-uses-magnets magic is wild – it really does boil water faster. Cooking on it also heats the overall kitchen far less. I hadn’t really though about it before, but during the DC summers we’re very conscious of how our gas stove would make the whole kitchen hot. This just isn’t the case with the induction range. The heat is generated in the pot itself (magnet magic!) and the kitchen stays a lot cooler.

The Why

Keeping the kitchen cool during dinner time was not, however, the original reason for making the switch away from a gas stove. Our overall electrification journey started in 2021, when we added solar panels to our house, and it was about reducing our home’s carbon footprint. Installing panels was a big decision, but a straight-forward project. Reducing natural gas felt more complicated. We finally updated our gas water heater to electric in September of 2025. And now most recently, in late June of 2026, we got rid of our gas stove.

The biggest reason for replacing the stove was indoor air quality. We had our indoor air quality tested by a volunteer from Beyond Gas in January of 2026 and it was pretty bad. When the volunteer took a reading in our home’s main floor on a weekday afternoon she first said, “were you guys just cooking?” We had not cooked anything since the previous day, so that was a bit alarming. 

So yes, we wanted to “de-carbonize” our home, but after realizing that our indoor air quality was actually being affected by our gas stove in a significant way, getting my house’s air inside EPA’s ambient air quality standard became a motivating factor. The project suddenly felt more urgent.

Back in May of 2025 we went to the Healthy Homes Fair and won a drawing for an induction cook top. I was super excited about this. I’d heard that cooking on induction was kinda different and that some pots and pans just wouldn’t work. So I really wanted to try it out using the free induction device and see how it worked for our situation. Would we like it? How many of our pans wouldn’t work? Unfortunately, a supply chain snafu led to significant delays in us getting our cooktop, and once we knew how bad our indoor air was it was time to just do the project anyhow.

Until somewhat recently it had been hard to find induction range at a price point that was comparable to the usual gas or regular electric ranges. Induction was kinda specialty and not sold in the 30” slide-in range size used in most American kitchens. That has, thankfully, changed. We shopped around a little, but were able to pretty easily find a range from Lowes that did what we wanted. We got an electric induction range for $1,400 including tax, removal of the old stove, and delivery (it was on sale for Memorial Day, but they tend to do those sales on holidays throughout the year).

The price of the range however, was not the biggest cost of the project. We also had to hire an electrician to add a new circuit and a plumber to cap our gas line. It cost $1,700 to install the new circuit and $225 to cap the gas line to the stove. Some of this cost will be offset by rebates, but spending more on contractors than the new stove wasn’t what we’d expected.

Lessons Learned

It’s likely that we could have made a few decisions to mitigate the cost of the new circuit. When we switched our gas water heater to electric I’d asked if they could also run a line to the kitchen and was told that they’d only do that if we knew exactly which stove we were going to install. I should have pushed back – the circuit sizing for residential electric stoves is standard. The folks that did install the circuit didn’t have any question about the model. I did ask what size wire and breakers they were going to install to confirm it would be OK, and of course it was fine. I’m sure we could have saved some labor costs if we’d run both circuits at the same time.

Another mistake we made was not having the gas line capped before Lowes delivered the new stove. The team that was going to install the stove wasn’t allowed to disconnect the old gas stove. They brought the new stove into our kitchen, but just left it there in the middle of the kitchen, without removing the old stove. We called a plumber who came out the next day and capped the gas line. Then the following day the installer came back to take the old stove away and set up the new one.

Successes

We haven’t finished the process yet, but we’re submitting the receipts and pictures of this project to the DCSEU, the DC Sustainable Energy Utility, for a couple of rebates. DCSEU offers an $800 rebate for gas to induction conversions, plus $400 for adding an electrical circuit, which we had to do as part of the conversion. Assuming we get these rebates, it will bring down the cost of the project from around $3,300 to just over $2,000.

While the process was a bit complicated, we’re super happy with the outcome. We’re one step closer on our path to converting our home from gas to electric, our kitchen is staying cooler in the summer even when we’re cooking, and we don’t have to run the fan and worry about indoor air pollution caused by burning gas in our house!