1) heat pump appliances are much more energy efficient (they move heat rather than convert it from electronics or molecules, and modern heat pumps work well in most cold climates (and you can also utilize resistive heating for the short period your outside of their optimal operating range)
2) time of use charges can be managed by smart applications and/or a whole home battery (and the battery gives you extra resiliency in case of an outage)
3) this is probably a problem with how your local electricity market is structured. ERCOT (Texas) developed and energy-only and has the cheapest electric rates in the nation (granted lots of this is due to abundant natural gas and renewables in the state) while other markets (say PJM in the north east) have energy + capacity markets and have seen huge (11x) increase in prices on the capacity market side.
Electric utilities are trying to manage not use resource adequacy (having enough generation) but transmission adequacy as well (having enough head room on transmission line to move power around without the lines burning up). But many utilities have been slow to adopt new technologies that would allow the to squeeze more capacity out of their existing infrastructure (things like dynamic line ratings, or distributed energy resources)
We need to do the work to align the economic/market incentives so that using more efficient technologies is actually cheaper.
1) heat pump appliances are much more energy efficient (they move heat rather than convert it from electronics or molecules, and modern heat pumps work well in most cold climates (and you can also utilize resistive heating for the short period your outside of their optimal operating range)
2) time of use charges can be managed by smart applications and/or a whole home battery (and the battery gives you extra resiliency in case of an outage)
3) this is probably a problem with how your local electricity market is structured. ERCOT (Texas) developed and energy-only and has the cheapest electric rates in the nation (granted lots of this is due to abundant natural gas and renewables in the state) while other markets (say PJM in the north east) have energy + capacity markets and have seen huge (11x) increase in prices on the capacity market side.
Electric utilities are trying to manage not use resource adequacy (having enough generation) but transmission adequacy as well (having enough head room on transmission line to move power around without the lines burning up). But many utilities have been slow to adopt new technologies that would allow the to squeeze more capacity out of their existing infrastructure (things like dynamic line ratings, or distributed energy resources)
We need to do the work to align the economic/market incentives so that using more efficient technologies is actually cheaper.