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Comment by ryan-c | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much of the difference is air conditioning?

I don't really think 2x the power usage comes from AC. The US has plenty of areas that only need a bit of AC for only part of the year.

It's definitely not all of the difference, but it's gotta be some.

Presumably those areas don’t need heating

That would be an incorrect assumption.

Please don't make assumptions on something you don't know anything about.

Even many northern US states (around the same Latitude as Madrid, north), on average, are 30-35+ every day during the summer and 0C to -10C in the winter. Many Canadians have air con.

So yes, heating and air con is a requirement in many areas. I live in a northern state, and we regularly have full weeks that are 38-40C.

Hehe, you also described Madrid and basically the center of Spain. From -5 to 45 extremes. More normal is around 0 in colder winter days and 35+ in hotter summer days. 36 today.

I don't either but certainly it's a big part of it since I rarely have seen a US household without some sort of cooling and of course heating. Add to that we have larger houses than Europe, like larger.

A part time job of mine is helping a buddy's solar company and right now I'm working on a project, for an older couple who are building a 4200sqft house with 4 mini-splits, 2 electric boilers that switch to gas when it's cold, 3 refrigerators, 2 deep freezes and a potential future electric vehicle. There's a pool too but that changes the dynamics of the system greatly but I don't design and quote that unless they really want to spend $$$.

I'm glad they're deciding to go solar but I see this so often it hurts. An older couple without kids in a giant house in the desert that requires immense heating and cooling wants some solar to help offset their gross over consumption. Rather than scale down to a, still large, 2000sqft high efficiency house they go with cheap construction so they have more than enough space for the one time a year all the family shows up. Oh yah then they fill it with crap that's rarely if ever used.

There's no judgement thrown to the customer as this is the reality of the world we live in, but I see this as seriously problematic. Especially going forward as these older individuals die. Can a family of 4 or 6 afford that place? Do they even want a place so large which requires such an inordinate amount of maintenance? Three 1400sqft high efficiency homes could be built on approximately that same space bringing down the price of the home, reducing maintenance and providing more than one couple space to live.

Sorry, that was more of a rant than anything. Europe is not the promised land but the US really has some screwy priorities when it comes to housing.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. I'm trying to convince my own aging parents to downsize. They're already running into physical issues getting around their house, let alone trying to keep it clean, organized, and maintained.

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