Climate Column: Petaluma’s Electric Revolution

Petaluma resident Patricia Webb stands next to her heat pump mini-split outdoor condenser.

NATASHA JULIANA
ARGUS-COURIER COLUMNIST
October 21, 2025

There is a quiet revolution happening all across town. Petalumans are ditching their noisy, polluting gas appliances and jumping onto the electrification bandwagon. Here are a few examples of how this is happening, through the eyes of our own neighbors.

Patricia Webb lives near McDowell Elementary School and has spent the last 10 years gathering green building information from local workshops and expos and then making the upgrades, one by one. She may be retired and living on a fixed income, but that hasn’t stopped her from making significant home improvements.

Webb was smart to start with a home energy audit that she won at the Local Energy Action Forum at the Petaluma Woman’s Club in 2015. This analysis led her to add wall and attic insulation first, making her a good candidate for the electric heat pump mini-split heating and air conditioning system she learned about at the 2017 Green Living Expo at the Veterans Building.

Since she was then using more electricity with her new Daikin ductless heat pump, Webb was ready for some sun power. She took a year’s worth of PG&E bills to the Sonoma County Energy and Sustainability Division and they calculated the solar system size she would need. Thinking ahead to all of the additional electrification she planned to do, she doubled that.

Armed with that information, and looking for a 10-panel, 3kW system, Webb got a dozen estimates and ultimately hired NorCal Solar after meeting them at the Sonoma County Fair in 2019.

In 2024, Webb went to a Cool Petaluma event at Aqus Cafe, where people gathered to talk about electrification. Conor Crawford with Local Plumbing had brought the chart of income qualification for heat pump water heater subsidies. Lo and behold, she was eligible for incentives that would cover 100% of the cost, including labor, so in went the new water heater.

Tearing a page out of Home & Garden magazine, she then bought the recommended GE front-loading combination washer and electric heat pump dryer, mostly because it’s great at removing pet hair and takes up so much less space.

You can tell Webb is on the right track when she says, “I have not paid a PG&E bill since April 2024. Now all I get is credit.”

Webb is not alone on this journey. Cynthia Rathkey had a similar path for her home near City Hall, except that she started with a small solar system of 2.1kW in 2007 and kept adding on to support her family’s growing electricity needs, including an electric car. Eventually the family ended up with a total of 6.9kW of solar and two Tesla Powerwall batteries for energy storage.

“In 2022, we got serious about replacing gas with electricity,” Rathkey said. They replaced their gas furnace with a heat pump system, only to discover that it was initially inadequate for their underinsulated home.

“We realized we needed to replace the ductwork for better insulation and air flow, and we needed to insulate the walls of two rooms that were original 1910 construction,” she said. After that, the heat pump worked well but, she added, “We had to get used to the fact that heating is much slower than with our old 80,000 BTU gas system.”

Next up was replacing the gas range with induction. “We love the cooktop. It’s just as flexible and instant as gas for controlling heat. And it has a short time burst mode, which allows you to bring a teapot to boil very fast,” Rathkey said. “And we feel much safer with no flame.”

Petaluma City Council member John Shribbs, who lives near the Petaluma Airport, has been on his own electrification journey, and has come up with some creative solutions for the gas-to-electric cooking challenge. He’s not the first person we’ve heard from who has decided to simply add countertop appliances instead of replacing the whole gas range.

“As retirees, we’ve found this single induction burner with a few induction-ready pots and pans can cook 90 percent of our stove-top foods,” Shribbs said. “It cooks fast enough that I can cook two separate foods faster on it than on two gas burners.” Adding a countertop air fryer unit, he found it cooks faster and more uniformly than either their old toaster oven or regular large oven.

Since 2020, Renee Harper, near Petaluma High School, has added solar panels, purchased an electric car and home charging unit, replaced an electric range/gas oven with an electric oven and induction cooktop, replaced a gas floor furnace with a dual-fuel heat pump ducted heating system, switched to an electric dryer, and swapped a gas water heater with an electric heat pump water heater.

“I’m delightfully surprised by how much our utility bill went down after we got rid of the gas appliances and got solar,” Harper said. “Cooking on the induction cooktop is terrific – super fast to heat and adjust, easy to clean and no fumes.” She’s also happy to have the air conditioning that automatically comes with a heat pump system on those hottest days.

Stephanie Adams has had a mixed experience with her home near Lucchesi Park. “I purchased my first EV in 2017 and installed a charger at home. I love everything about this,” she said. The electric induction range she installed four years ago, however, was expensive and still does not work well despite numerous service calls. But that hasn’t stopped Adams from moving forward. “I will be getting solar panels with battery backup installed next week,” she said.

Gail Abrams got inspired by Cool Petaluma to look into heat pumps. She found a contractor who knew all about local rebates and took her through the HVAC and water heater installations, including upgrades to insulation plus installing attic fans and vents.

“The shock of the cost of electric heat, even energy-efficient heat pumps, the following winter inspired me to install solar and a backup battery,” Abrams said. One unexpected benefit of her new heat pump heating and cooling is how quiet and gentle it is. “The quality of the air is significantly better. It’s noticeably more comfortable.”

“Now that I’m doing it,” she added, “I’m looking forward to being all-electric. I plan to buy a camp stove for emergencies that go beyond my battery’s capacity.”

If you are interested in getting on the electrification bandwagon, a great place to start is at sonomacounty.gov/energy as well as switchison.org. Plan ahead by checking the age of your existing gas appliances (and their expected lifespan) so you can start thinking about how you will replace them when they burn out and leave you, quite literally, in the cold. The solutions, for when that day comes, are very bright.

Natasha Juliana is campaign director for Cool Petaluma. She can be reached at natashaj@coolpetaluma.org. For information on how to get involved, visit coolpetaluma.org.