All things told I was prepared to spend around $75k on electrical to make this happen in a remote location, which seemed reasonable to me given the capabilities & stability I would get in return. It is not something most people could afford, but most people here on HN probably could which is why I mentioned it.
For emergencies, I think I would put more trust in a low-tech wood burner, moving extra wood in-house whenever there’s a serious storm forecast.
Still, in general it seems like the ultimate design constraint is always low probability events adding up - eg solar generation getting severely cut for a week, due to snow on the panels and cloudy days or hardware failure, coupled with many cold nights in a row. For which a fall back to a more traditional denser energy source (wood or gasoline) that you'd end up using every few years comes in much cheaper than trying to oversize the primary battery storage to handle every long tail event.
Okay, I do agree this qualifies as opting out of the housing market.
> Believe it or not, people with ethics and willpower to follow through still exist
Sure. I'm there myself on a few topics, and have lived them for quite some time. But you need to understand that this puts you at odds with 99% of society, and as such your example isn't going to be found as actionable advice by the sheer majority of people - even people who agree with you 90% of the way.
Do you mind sharing your numbers? If I just spitball with a 10kBTU/hr design load, a heat pump COP of 3, and assume that your heating requirements are taken care of by that design load for 8 hours at night, that's still like 3 Powerwalls. I'd say there are better ways to spend those resources, especially considering that batteries wear out like everything else.