Testimonial from Duke Castle
Duke Castle was part of a team working on the initial city-community climate action plan and learned that the quickest and most impactful thing citizens in Lake Oswego could do to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions was to electrify their vehicles. So the first thing he and Jan did was purchase an electric vehicle in the fall of 2018.
It was shortly afterwards that he began to hear about taking the electrification concept even further by electrifying everything in their home and getting off “natural” gas. Duke knew about heat pumps as the best answer for home heating but held off due to their higher cost. What finally convinced him to make the move was when Portland General Electric offered a $3000 rebate. He and Jan knew from past experience that when a gas heater fails you don’t have a lot of time to research alternatives. So they decided to act then while the rebate was still available.
Duke contacted Sunset Heating and Cooling and spoke to Peter Fritz who was quite knowledgeable and recommended a heat pump sized for their home along with a list of additional rebates they would qualify for.
Duke’s neighbor, Kathy Kremer, told Duke about the existence of heat pump water heaters so he and Jan made that conversion also.
“We had no other gas appliances at that point so I was able to call Northwest Natural and tell them to terminate our service. That felt great”!
One benefit of going with a heat pump was that the Castles now had air conditioning. Their home is so well insulated that air conditioning was never needed until the temperature reached 1160 in June 2021. “Wow, were we glad we made the switch to a heat pump when we did.”
Other changes have included signing up for community solar and signing up for PGE’s Time of Day rate structure which is saving about $35 per month.
Overall the Castles are very pleased with their choices. The EV is really fun to drive and the home is comfortable all year round.
