Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jagermo 288 days ago
I find it fascinating that renewables always have to have a ROI.

nobody cares about his car loosing value as soon as you drive off the parking lot. Or any other appliance - a fridge will never have a ROI, a washing machine will not and neither will a stove, a macbook or a fancy smart home system. They are part of our live, loose value and we accept that.

But solar or batteries (granted, mostly with home-solutions)? Better make money, otherwise why even bother.

1 comments

ROI is implicitly against the alternative or status quo:

- Fridge: has ROI vs. going to the store more often or getting food poisoning.

- Washing machine: Has ROI measured in the value of your time spent not slapping clothes against a board to make them clean.

- Stove: ROI vs. using and maintaining a fire pit, with the risk of burning your house down factored in.

- MacBook: ROI is how much work you can get done vs. a Windows machine, or not having a laptop and doing math really fast by hand on paper.

Etc. It is suspicious that there isn’t a “this will pay for itself in N years vs. not having it” statement somewhere.