Sample report
Your electrification report
San Francisco, CA 94110
- Driving
- Heating & cooling
- Hot water
Prepared November 13, 2026
Four futures for the same house
Most of this equipment gets replaced on its own schedule rather than yours. Once it fails you are buying a replacement either way — so the question that sets your bills for years afterwards is not whether to change anything. It is which replacement you buy.
Running cost, upfront cost, and how long the difference takes to come back
| What is being compared | Do nothing Run what you have until it fails. | Replace with gas Like-for-like, on the same fuels. | Electrify Electric kit, priced at grid electricity. | Electrify, on solar The same electric kit, priced against your own roof. Array not costed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Energy bills, a year | $5,490/yr | $5,490/yr | $3,818/yr | $1,377/yr |
| Cost on day one | $0 | $14,600 | $27,700 | Array not costed |
| Time to earn back the extra | Nothing spent yet | The option the others are measured against | about 6 years | Not calculated |
| What that means | Nothing to pay today. The replacement bill still arrives, on the equipment’s schedule rather than yours. | Charged at today’s running cost, because the model has no state for a brand-new condensing furnace or a newer petrol car. Either would run a little cheaper than what it replaces, so this column is generous to electrifying rather than to gas. | Every kilowatt-hour is bought from the grid at the rate in the assumptions table. | We do not size or price an array, so this column says what the house would cost to run and nothing about what the roof would cost. With no capital figure there is no payback to calculate. |
Electrifying costs $13,100 more on day one than replacing like for like and takes the energy bill from $5,490 to $3,818 a year, so the extra is back in about 6 years. On power from your own roof the same house runs at $1,377 a year instead, though we do not size or cost an array, so that column carries no payback of its own.
Running costs are energy bills. Servicing and maintenance are counted in the payback figure but not in the bill row, because a bill is a bill. Upfront figures are our own installed-cost estimates rather than quotes, with nothing subtracted for incentives. The price of the car itself is excluded from this table altogether, because you were going to buy a car either way, and what people choose and what they pay for it vary far too much for one figure to stand in for your decision. Only $2,200 of going electric for it reaches the row above — a charger is not a vehicle, it is electrical work on the house, and it is the one upfront cost that arises only if you go electric. Payback sets the extra cost of electrifying against replacing with gas, with energy prices assumed to rise 2.0% a year above inflation — the assumption is in the table at the end.
Where your money goes today
Before changing anything, this is what a year of energy costs at this address.
Annual energy spend today
$5,490 a year
| End use | Fuel | Annual cost | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heating & cooling Gas furnace, plus electric air conditioning | Natural gasElectricity | $502 | 9% |
| Hot water Gas storage tank | Natural gas | $733 | 13% |
| Driving 2014 Ford Focus FWD | Petrol | $1,945 | 35% |
| Everything else Lights, plugs, laundry, cooking, and the standing charge on each meter | ElectricityNatural gas | $2,310 | 42% |
| Total | $5,490 | 100% |
Everything else is the biggest single line at $2,310 a year — 42% of a $5,490 bill. The three end uses this report looks at — Heating & cooling, Hot water and Driving — come to $3,179 of that, 58% of the bill. The rest is carried so the savings later on are measured against a whole bill rather than a slice of one.
One row per end use, with the fuel each one burns. Modelled from your postcode, climate zone and the vehicle details you gave us. See the assumptions at the end.
How energy turns into dollars here
Four prices drive every figure in this report. They are the ones this model actually charged, not national averages — which is why the answer for your house is not the one you read online.
What one unit of each fuel costs here
| One unit of | Costs | Where that price comes from |
|---|---|---|
| 1 therm natural gas | $2.78 | The rate every therm in this report was priced at. |
| 1 kWh grid electricity | $0.309 | The blended rate in the assumptions table, before standing charges. |
| 1 gallon petrol | $5.54 | Regional pump price, taxes included. |
| 1 kWh from your own roof | No marginal cost | The marginal cost of a kilowatt-hour you have already generated and consume yourself. This is a definition rather than a measurement, which is why it is the one number on this site with no citation -- and why it carries the caveat below wherever it appears. Distinct from solar_generation_cost, which is what producing that kilowatt-hour costs over the life of the array; both are real numbers answering different questions, and this one is the right one for pricing a marginal load. |
Unit for unit, electricity is the dear fuel here: the 29.3 kilowatt-hours of energy in one therm cost $9.06 at your electricity rate, against $2.78 for the therm itself — about 3.3 times as much for the same energy. Which is why the price list settles nothing on its own. What matters is not what a unit of fuel costs but what a unit of the thing you actually buy costs — heat in the rooms, hot water at the tap, a mile of road — and an appliance’s efficiency is what stands between the two. The charts below are what that comes to for each of them.
Standing charges sit on top of these and are billed whether you use anything or not: about $9 a month on the electricity meter and $6 a month on the gas meter. Electrifying every gas end use is what lets the second one go.
Put those side by side and one number decides each part of the plan: what it costs to deliver one unit of the thing you actually buy — a mile of driving, a kilowatt-hour of heat and a kilowatt-hour of hot water.
Cost per mile driven
| How the mile is driven | Cost per mile driven | How that is worked out |
|---|---|---|
| The petrol car you have | $0.185 per mile | $5.54 a gallon at 30.0 mpg. |
| An electric car on grid electricity | $0.075 per mile | $0.309 a kWh at 4.1 miles per kWh. |
| An electric car on your own solar | No marginal cost per mile | A kilowatt-hour you have already generated costs nothing further to use, at the same 4.1 miles per kWh. |
At these rates an electric car costs about 59% less to run than the petrol car it replaces. Your own roof takes it further still: the same electric car runs at no marginal cost at all, because a kilowatt-hour you have already generated costs nothing further to use.
Fuel on both sides and nothing else: no servicing is counted in either bar, so these are the same kind of figure as the heat ones above. The model does credit an electric car $0.03 a mile less to service, and that is counted in the savings and payback sections rather than folded into a price here. The efficiencies are the ones the model actually drove — your own car's figures where you gave them to us, a cited fleet average where you did not.
Cost per kWh of heat delivered
| How the heat is made | Cost per kWh of heat delivered | How that is worked out |
|---|---|---|
| The gas furnace you have | $0.149 per kWh of heat | $2.78 a therm, with 72% of it reaching the rooms, weighted across the heating season. |
| A heat pump on grid electricity | $0.078 per kWh of heat | $0.309 a kWh at an effective seasonal COP of 3.8. |
| A heat pump on your own solar | No marginal cost per kWh of heat | A kilowatt-hour you have already generated costs nothing further to use, at the same COP of 3.8. |
At these rates a heat pump costs about 48% less to run than the furnace it replaces. Your own roof takes it further still: the same heat pump runs at no marginal cost at all, because a kilowatt-hour you have already generated costs nothing further to use.
The gas figure describes the 80%-AFUE furnace the rest of this report models, derated to 72% for duct losses. A brand-new condensing furnace would land lower; the model has no state for one, so we do not invent the number.
Cost per kWh of hot water delivered
| How the hot water is made | Cost per kWh of hot water delivered | How that is worked out |
|---|---|---|
| The gas tank you have | $0.177 per kWh of hot water | $2.78 a therm, with 55% of it reaching the taps, weighted across the year. |
| A heat pump water heater on grid electricity | $0.106 per kWh of hot water | $0.309 a kWh at an installed COP of 2.9. |
| A heat pump water heater on your own solar | No marginal cost per kWh of hot water | A kilowatt-hour you have already generated costs nothing further to use, at the same COP of 2.9. |
At these rates a heat pump water heater costs about 40% less to run than the gas tank it replaces. Your own roof takes it further still: the same heat pump water heater runs at no marginal cost at all, because a kilowatt-hour you have already generated costs nothing further to use.
The gas figure describes the 60%-EF tank the rest of this report models, derated to 55% for the standby and flue losses a tank of that age runs with. The electric figure uses the installed COP for this climate rather than a laboratory rating, because these units live in unheated spaces and that is where the efficiency actually lands.
Hot water and Heating & cooling are both priced per kilowatt-hour of useful output, so they can be read against each other — and the dearer of the two today is hot water, at $0.177 against $0.149, because the tank delivers 55% of the gas it burns where the furnace delivers 72%. The electric options do not all gain by the same margin: driving gains the most, about 59% cheaper per mile, and hot water the least, at about 40%. That last one is the efficiency the appliance actually achieves where it sits — an installed COP of 2.9 against 3.8 for heating & cooling — because it stands in a garage that runs cool all winter rather than in heated air.
Nothing at the margin is not the same as free. Generating that kilowatt-hour costs about $0.11 over the life of an unsubsidised array. The rows above use the marginal figure because that is the one that changes your bills — and the gap between the two is exactly why the solar option carries no upfront cost in this report rather than a flattering one.
$0 is the marginal cost of solar you generate and use yourself. It is not system payback, and it is not the export credit value of power you send back to the grid.
The generic solar cost per kWh and the self-consumption fraction are our own estimates, not researched figures, and they are labelled as such wherever they appear. Solar is priced here as a lens -- a second price for a kilowatt-hour -- and no array is sized or costed. Neither figure should be read as a quote or as a prediction of what any particular roof will do.
What each one saves, and when it pays for itself
Biggest saver first. That is not the same order as cheapest to install, so it is a guide to what matters most rather than to what to do on Saturday — and each row answers for itself, because these technologies earn their money back at very different speeds.
Each upgrade on its own
| Upgrade | Saves a year | Time to earn back the extra | Saves a year, on your own solar |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Driving | $1,471/yr | about 18 months on $2,200 for the charger rather than the car, which you were buying either way | $1,639/yr |
| 2 Hot water | $294/yr | about 12 years on $3,900 more than replacing it like for like | $611/yr |
| 3 Heating & cooling | $283/yr | does not pay back within 20 years on energy savings alone on $7,000 more than replacing it like for like | $320/yr |
Driving is both the biggest saver at $1,471 a year and the quickest to earn its extra back, in about 18 months. It is the row to start with. Heating & cooling does not pay back within 20 years on energy savings alone at these rates: worth doing for comfort, air quality or emissions, but not on the arithmetic, and this report would rather say that than round it away. Driving’s extra is $2,200, and that is for the charger rather than the car, which you were buying either way. The last column prices the same upgrade against power from your own roof. Each of these is worth more that way, which is usual but not a rule: where an upgrade makes a load more efficient that your own generation was already covering, the figure comes out lower instead. We do not size or price an array, so this column carries no payback of its own — the same reason the solar future in that table carries none.
Each payback is that upgrade’s own extra cost against its own saving, on the same premise as the futures table earlier in this report: the equipment is being replaced anyway, so what is charged here is only the extra the electric option costs and never its whole price — each row’s cell says what its own extra is an extra over. Add these extras together and you have the whole-home figure that table prints — which is one blended return on all of it, not this list averaged.
What the money does not say
Everything above this is a bill. These are the reasons that never appear on one — and, beside each of them, what you give up. Every upside here is somebody else’s published finding rather than ours; where a trade-off is our own judgement it says so.
Driving
-
What you gain
An electric car has no tailpipe, so your driving no longer emits anything on the street it is driving down. EPA puts more than 45 million people in the US living, working or at school within 300 feet of a major road, and associates near-road exposure with reduced lung function, asthma, cardiovascular disease and premature death. One car is one car — what changes is where the emission happens.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Research on Near Roadway and Other Near Source Air Pollution
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What you gain
No oil to change, no exhaust, no spark plugs. The US Department of Energy's list is fewer fluids, far fewer moving parts than a combustion engine, and brake wear significantly reduced by regenerative braking. That is less that can go wrong, which is a different thing from cheaper fuel.
Alternative Fuels Data Center, U.S. Department of Energy: Maintenance and Safety of Electric Vehicles
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The trade-off
An EV is only convenient if you can charge where you park. With a driveway or a garage, fuelling stops being an errand and the car starts every morning full. Without off-street parking you are relying on public charging, which costs considerably more per mile than the home rate this report prices and needs planning rather than a habit.
Our own judgement, not a measurement.
Heating & cooling
-
What you gain
The same box heats and cools. ENERGY STAR describes a ducted heat pump as a central air conditioner that also works in reverse to heat the house in winter, so replacing a furnace with one adds air conditioning a furnace cannot provide at all. If your home has none today, that is a capability you did not have rather than a bill that gets smaller.
ENERGY STAR (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency): Air-Source Heat Pumps
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What you gain
A furnace burns gas inside the house and vents the exhaust up a flue. CDC counts more than 400 unintentional non-fire carbon monoxide deaths and more than 100,000 emergency department visits a year in the US, and names gas furnaces and water heaters among the household sources. Taking the appliance out removes that failure mode, and if it is the last gas appliance, the gas line with it.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Basics
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The trade-off
A heat pump supplies air at around 95-105F where a furnace supplies it at 130-140F, so it has to move considerably more air to deliver the same heat. Ducts sized for a furnace sometimes need sealing, larger returns or new registers before a heat pump feels as warm, and the coldest mornings are when a system that was sized tightly leans on its backup heat.
Our own judgement, not a measurement.
Hot water
-
What you gain
A heat pump water heater takes the heat for your hot water out of the air around the tank — ENERGY STAR puts that at 2,500 to 5,000 Btu an hour while it is running — so in a garage or basement it quietly cools and dehumidifies a space you were not heating anyway.
ENERGY STAR (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency): Heat Pump Water Heater Frequently Asked Questions
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What you gain
EPA's own list of indoor nitrogen dioxide sources is unvented appliances such as gas stoves, and vented appliances with defective installations. A correctly flued gas tank is in neither group, so what electrifying removes is a flue that could one day stop working — not a dose anybody has measured in your house. That is a smaller claim than the gas-stove headlines, and it is the one we can stand behind.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Nitrogen Dioxide's Impact on Indoor Air Quality
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The trade-off
That cooling is a cost rather than a benefit in a conditioned closet or hallway, where the tank pulls heat out of air your heating system paid to warm. It also needs room to breathe — manufacturers ask for roughly 450 to 700 cubic feet of air around it — and it is audible at 45 to 55 dBA, about a dishwasher, so the far side of a bedroom wall is the wrong place for one.
ENERGY STAR (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency): Heat Pump Water Heater Frequently Asked Questions
Incentives
Zero assumed. Anything you qualify for is upside.
Federal, state, utility and local incentives change often enough that we would rather look yours up on the day you ask than print a figure here that has gone out of date. Reply to the email this report came with — or write to info@electrifynow.io — with your postcode, and we will research what is currently available where you live and send you what we find.
Nothing has been subtracted for them. Every upfront figure and every payback above is the gross cost with no rebate, credit or discount netted off, so if you qualify for anything at all the real numbers are better than the ones printed here.
What this is based on
| Assumption | Value | Where it came from |
|---|---|---|
| Postcode | 94110 | you told us |
| Utility | Pacific Gas & Electric | estimated |
| Climate zone | Coastal / marine | estimated |
| Electricity rate | $0.309 per kWh | estimated |
| Existing solar | no | you told us |
| Home energy use | modelled from your climate zone | estimated |
| Car you drive now | 2014 Ford Focus FWD (30 mpg) | you told us |
| Electric car considered | 2026 Tesla Model 3 Standard RWD (4.12 miles per kWh) | you told us |
| Annual mileage | 10,535 miles | you told us |
| Charging | at home, overnight | you told us |
| Equipment cost before any netting | $27,700 to electrify, against $14,600 for the like-for-like conventional replacements | estimated |
| Electric vehicle replacing a gasoline car — the purchase itself is not in this model | $2,200 and nothing more is charged to this decision, for the charger rather than the car, which you were buying either way | estimated |
| Energy prices in future years | assumed to rise 2.0% a year above general inflation | estimated |
| Space heating — the equipment you have now | assumed about 10 years old: 80% on the label, about 72% actually delivered after losses in service | estimated |
| Water heating — the equipment you have now | assumed about 10 years old: 60% on the label, about 55% actually delivered after losses in service | estimated |
What this report does not include
The upfront figures are our own estimate, not a quote. Installed prices vary more between two contractors on the same street than any model can predict, so treat every one of them as a planning figure to be replaced by a real bid. They assume no electrical panel upgrade and no major duct replacement, either of which can add several thousand dollars.
Nothing is netted off for rebates or tax credits. Payback runs on gross cost, which means every payback figure here is the slow end — see the incentives section above.
Solar is priced but not costed. It appears as a second price for a kilowatt-hour, because that is what changes your bills; we do not size an array, quote one, or claim a payback for one, and the column that shows it says so on its face.
Full methodology, rates and sources →
Estimates, not a quote or a bid. Not professional electrical engineering advice, and not tax advice. Actual costs and savings depend on your specific home, equipment and how you use it.