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Comment by johnea | Hacker News Reader

With the car, my back of the napkin calculation, says it will pay for itself in about 5 years. At ~10K miles/year, and San Diego gas prices of ~$5/gal..

It's hard to judge with the mini-split, since the house didn't have A/C at all before, and the ADU is new, so there is no history to compare.

In the next few years though, I intend to install solar and batteries. This takes a little longer to pay off, but it's getting shorter all the time. Utilitys, especially SDG&E here in San Diego, have been raising rates at ~12%/year for quite a while.

I hope to be totally energy self sufficient in another 1-3 years (including operating the car).

I would expect this prospect to be very appealing to conservative rural residents, and yet for some reason there is a huge support for continuing to be dependent on oil companies.

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> I would expect this prospect to be very appealing to conservative rural residents

I am in a conservative rural district right now. Here's the math: 20% are at or below the federal poverty line, and of the remainder there are a huge number of people on fixed incomes or sitting on major credit card or vehicle debts (people own trucks or farm equipment, often related to work). They have very little wiggle room on any major investments, not just clean energy.

Yet people understand the value of solar. There are households and even some farms with solar arrays here. They also know utilities are jacking up prices despite huge wind farms and hydro nearby (this is in part due to local crypto mining ventures that sprouted up 10 years ago, which will likely be joined by AI farms in the coming years.)

People aren't staying away solar because there is "huge support" for fossil fuels. They are staying away from solar (and heat pumps) because they simply cannot afford the cost. They don't have the cash on hand, they will never qualify for loans, and in many cases they are dealing with existing debt or emergency costs.

I see. For others with existing systems, you'd have to save $333/mo to break even over 3 years assuming a $12k install.

My combined gas and electric bills don't even reach $200/mo during peak months.

I'd expect that is why most people don't switch.

New installs, sure I think it makes sense.

In the long run, it all pays for itself. Every homeowner should pursue it. The sooner the better.

Especially once complete independence from an electric utility is achieved.

I totally agree with you that the time to install this stuff is at time of construction. Unfortunately real estate developers don't really care about how much it costs to _operate_ a building, they only care about building it as cheaply as possible, and selling for as high a price as possible.

The cost to increase insulation, add solar and batteries, all electric appliances, would all pay for itself over a decade or so.

Most homes in the US are occupied for many decades (not all by the same owner) so the savings are substantial over the lifetime of the building.

Of course, the consumer's savings are the electric utilities losses, and we know who has the pull in policy creation...

You'd at best break even over the decade, that's not really a sound financial strategy.

And many of these things, like heat pumps last twice that at best, so you have to account for depreciation.

It's more economically sound to invest the money or pay off your auto loan / credit card bills.

It makes no sense to switch when you have a working system, only to replace a failing one or during construction.

See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44425004 for a breakdown of one scenario.

Again, I do think this tech is great, but I see no upside in switching when you have a working system.

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