All Electric

One night, getting a fire started with my brother-in-law Antonio Sánchez (PhD from ETH Zürich, the kind of person who explains something and then you can’t un-know it), he taught me that every time we use fire to cook, heat water, or light a room, we’re wasting most of the energy as heat we don’t need. That the right machines, like induction stoves, heat pumps, LEDs, do the same jobs using a fraction of the energy. The problem isn’t fire. It’s using fire where electricity already is the better tool.

The thermodynamics are more complicated than that, but the direction was right. That was enough for me to make the most drastic and worst-executed decision of my domestic life: cut the Metrogas line and make the entire house electric in 2015.

Everything. Heating, hot water, stove, oven. Overnight, gas was gone, and my newborn Olimpia was 1 month old.

Evi nearly killed me. Santiago had its worst snowstorm in over a decade, the blackout was massive and lasted days, and inside the house it was 14°C. No gas, no heating, no hot water, no stove. Fourteen degrees and dropping, with an “I told you so” face lit by a phone flashlight. Not the best timing to be innovating with energy sources.

The Missing Piece

The mistake wasn’t electrifying the house. The mistake was electrifying it without backup. If your only energy provider is the grid and the grid goes down, you don’t have a house, you have a cold building with decorative appliances.

What became clear that night: if you’re going all electric, you need batteries. And if the goal is to eliminate fossil fuels — which in my case it was — batteries are the most expensive but also the most important component in the entire system.

What I learned later is that you don’t need to solve everything at once. A UPS for the fridge and the router (and the coffeemaker) costs little, keeps the essentials running during an outage, and remains useful when you eventually install a larger battery system. It’s not wasted money: it’s a start.

Where the Equation Flips

Years later we moved to Frutillar, 1,000 km south of Santiago — cloudier, rainier, and a much harder test for an all-electric house.

Solar panels have gotten so good and so cheap that the question is no longer “how many do I need?” but “how many can I fit?”. On sunny days you’ll produce more than you consume — but that’s not a problem, it’s an advantage: as long as you feed the surplus back to the grid or use it as a virtual battery. On cloudy days — which in Frutillar are most of them — you’re grateful for every extra panel, because 1% efficiency multiplied by many panels still charges your batteries.

Today we have 22 kWp of solar panels and 33 kWh of lithium-ion batteries. I have room for more, but we rarely get extended outages, and net metering turns out to be the ultimate battery.

The heat pump is our main source of heating and hot water — with electric tank heaters as backup. Induction stove, electric oven. And a smart charger for the electric vehicles that regulates its power draw based on whatever current the house isn’t using. The car charges on what’s left over, not what's needed.

A year ago we added the electric car, and that closed the loop. Ten years after cutting the gas, fossil fuels disappeared from domestic life.

Well, almost. The barbecue is still wood-fired and candlelit dinners are still fire. Fire stayed where it always should have been: in ritual, not in utility.

What I’d Do Differently

I’d buy the batteries first. Before the panels, before the induction stove, before anything. Not because they matter more in the long run, but because they’re what saves you the night of the blackout — and the night of the blackout is when your family decides whether the “all electric” project is a brilliant idea or a dangerous one.

Panels can wait a summer. Batteries can’t wait a winter.

Ten Years Later

Antonio was right, even if the reasoning was more complicated than I understood that night. Fire isn’t inefficient by nature — it’s that today there are machines that do the same work better. The heat pump burns nothing and delivers three times more energy than it consumes. Induction heats the pot, not the air around it. The LED converts nearly all its electricity into light, not heat.

The system works. Not because it’s perfect, but because each component covers the weakness of another. The panels generate, the batteries store, the grid backs up, and net metering closes the gap.

It’s an ecosystem, not a solution.

Is it worth it? After ten years, an electric car, a marriage that survived the 14 degrees, and zero gas bills: yes. But if you ask me when I truly knew it worked, it wasn’t when the panels arrived or when the batteries filled up. It was the first time the power went out in the neighbourhood and my house continued uninterrupted.

The fire is still burning at the grill with Antonio. It just doesn’t heat the water anymore.