My payback is 6-7 years in Canada with $0 invested.

“Responsible for my own power generation” = I do literally nothing. Nada.

I get $1000 a year for free.

Please show me someone who does not want $1000 per year for absolutely nothing.

A lot of people in my area are interested and it would be a net positive for them long term, but the area is poor so few can afford the initial costs despite knowing the money they would ultimately be saving.

Most people don’t have the capital to be responsible for their own electricity generation, except the rich.

It's really not expensive anymore. There's a Black Friday deal on amazon.de for an entry-level Anker Solix system with 4x500W panels and a 2.6 kWh battery. 1200 EUR.

For those that don't have the cash, financing is available.

Have you read this, about SunKing and SunCulture in Africa, recently posted on HN: https://climatedrift.substack.com/p/why-solarpunk-is-already...

Their smallest solar products are small lanterns. Simply having a pollution-free source of light is already a quality of life improvement for some people. One step up is to add a USB port to charge phones.

Oh I’m sure, Pakistan has alot of trade with China also so it’s probably cheaper than in the west. But it would still be expensive for the poorer Pakistanis, and would require some investment, they simply have less ability to do that than a richer middle class Pakistani, so the poor pay the poor tax because they can’t invest capital to bring their costs down.

Low Chinese prices are making it more and more possible though. I hope the future will be really different.

We're seeing solar with batteries going in in sub-Saharan Africa, so don't tell me something can't be made to work even with the poor in Pakistan.

Visit Australia, plenty of people are! When the real paybacks are generally 4-8 years (depending on what we're talking about) why wouldn't people be? We have 4.2 million solar systems (for reference there are almost 11 million dwellings). Just this year the Federal Government started giving out grants for home batteries and over 55,000 people have already taken that up and at least 90,000 home battery installations exist so far according to these stats: https://cer.gov.au/markets/reports-and-data/small-scale-inst...

Even if people don't go to the lengths I do (I like to watch the current generation and will slightly delay my use big loads like the washing machine, dishwasher, dryer etc. to try and use as much as my solar as possible), it's still very common for people to choose to do things like set the dishwasher timer in the day to use solar - which is great because it's also taking load off the grid.

#1 is correct. #2 is quite incorrect.

Most of the costs for residential solar are installation. Systems that you install yourself, e.g. balcony solar, have payback times below five years (even in less than ideal regions, like Germany). I would assume that labor in Pakistan is a bit cheaper.