I'm deeply suspect of electric heat and all electric appliances, even though that's what I have to have in my condo. Mind you, we really don't get significant outages in Crystal City (underground lines, close to substations, etc...), but electric heat is just so inefficient (generate the power, transmit it, convert it to heat). It's even worse if it is fossil-fueled in terms of efficiency because you have to combust something to generate the heat to power a turbine or to generate steam to power a turbine to generate the electricity. All those conversions and transmission losses just is incredibly inefficient, especially in comparison to just simply burning gas at the end point and using the heat directly. Ironic as all heck that in the middle of a natural gas boom in Texas all the heat is electric.