For the first time I can remember, my power company was sending out Texts here in the midwest during that last Arctic blast telling people to use less electricity because the grid was over taxed.
Our National Energy grid is very very fragile.
Converting natural gas furnaces to heat pumps and replacing resistive heating with heat pumps, would not increase the total electricity usage at all. Last I looked 40% of heating in Texas was done through resistive heating, heat pumps would be 3-4x more efficient. There is current power devoted to resistance heating to run heat pumps for every home.
That said, no one isreplacing NatGas with Electric Resistive Heating, that would be crazy, NatGas is still cheaper in most cases for people north of say KY but there are alot of HeatPumps going in
I am unclear why you think replacing a NatGas heater with a HeatPump "would not increase the total electricity usage at all" that is just false, and I am not even sure why you would claim other wise, NatGas is not an Electric Fuel Source so when you change from a non-electric fuel source to an electric fuel source you will use more electricity. Now changing from Resistive Electric to heatPump would actually drop your electrical usage in some cases (above 0degrees anyway)
Around here it is not uncommon to have a HeatPump with a Gas "emergency" heater for when it gets too cold for the heatpump, as Electric Resistive is TERRIBLE and expensive. The problem is when that combo is sold normally it is wiht 80% furnances or they just leave the old furnace in place and just upgrade the AC/Heatpumpt
Anyways in areas where it regularly goes below 0F, the transition will not be smooth (but probably still necessary). Heat pumps that operate efficiently down -20F are just coming out and will be even more expensive than normal heat pumps. Also most residential energy usage in really cold areas are from burning natural gas, so electricity generation is quite low compared to warmer parts of the country.
I do not live in texas.
