After years of flying glow, I jumped into electric flying with both feet. I recently completed a .60 glow equivilent scratch built Stephens Akro, plans by Brad Sheppard. It's powered by an e-flite power 60 brushless outrunner, Castle Creations HV85 ESC, and Thunder Power Extreme 4500mAh 6-s lipo batterys. A separate UBEC eliminates the need for a separate reciever battery.
As far as I know, the only downside is that those batterys cost about $280 each. OUCH!!! I haven't had enough experience to know for sure how long these batteries will last but if they last 280 flights, that would be about a buck a flight, about the same as 8 ounces of glow fuel.
On the other hand, I can build a second .60 size plane or even a whole fleet of them and I won't have to re-buy those batteries, since I can only fly one plane at a time anyway.
It's nice to not have to wipe goo off of your plane after you are through flying and my wife doesn't mind these planes being in the house. Also, I try not to gloat when other people's glow planes flame out on the runway.

About 1/3 of the pattern flyers and 1/2 of the world's top ten pattern flyers have switched to electric. I don't think it's because they are a bunch of tree-huggers trying to make a politically correct statement.