Monthly Archives: March 2026

Year 7-Celebrating Green Dreams Come True

The Rock Stars: Hyundai Ioniq 5, Nissan Ariya and 30 solar panels on the roof. Driving free on Nevada sunshine!

We have been on a quest to reduce our carbon footprint and green our life since 2019 when we installed our first set of solar panels and bought a used Nissan LEAF. Wow, have we come a long way since then! We are excited to have exceeded our goals while saving more money than we had expected (and it looks like we may save even more in the future as energy prices increase). Driving EV’s is thrilling, especially knowing that you are driving free on Nevada sunshine and emitting zero carbon! We also feel more comfortable in our home with our new HVAC systems, while saving money and natural gas. Going green has improved our lives on all levels and we have already broken even on our investment. We estimate we will save $84,000-$100,000 over the next 20 years that we intend to keep our home and our cars.

Here’s a table showing our average annual savings and other interesting stats:

Reduction in Our Carbon Footprint

We are thrilled to have made our goal of an over 50% reduction in our carbon footprint! A similar US household emits 50 tons of carbon dioxide per year, so at 19 tons, we emit about 62% less. Changes made: Driving all electric vehicles, installing 30 solar panels, replacing old water heater and HVAC with heat pumps, using zone heating, switching to LED lighting, eating less meat and dairy and more fruits and veggies. We used the Nature Conservancy calculator (https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon-footprint-calculator/) if you want to see what your carbon footprint is.

Annual $ Savings

I realized that I was not capturing the full value of our solar panels in my previous calculations. Now that we are using all the electricity we produce, our utility savings is a mix of the value of the electricity produced at current electrical rates + the value of the gas savings at current gas rates. We now use 63% less natural gas than we did in the past.

Our savings are likely to increase over time as the demand for electricity and natural gas increases, particularly with the growth in data centers to power AI. I recently read an article that projected a quadrupling of our energy demands in northern Nevada! It is expected that residential customers will be shouldering a portion of these costs through increased prices. If this happens, we could see the value of our panels increase significantly.

We save an average of about $3,000 per year by driving our EV’s. We expect that savings to increase over time as the EV’s age. They will require less R&M than their comparable gas vehicles and we anticipate that gas prices will trend up over the 20 years we hope to drive these vehicles, increasing that savings as well. For information on our EV savings and driving experience, see this post: https://rhondaashurst.com/2025/02/06/2023-and-2024-recap-of-driving-our-evs/.

Below is a breakdown of the total added home value and savings from the first table. I reference the savings I calculated when I did my last review in 2022. In that blog, I shared what we did in a lot more detail and offered suggestions if you want ideas for greening your own life (https://rhondaashurst.com/2023/03/05/year-4-its-all-coming-together/).

Between the annual savings of our systems, which all work in synergy with one another, we have saved $29,000 in 7 years! Our home value has increased by an estimated $34,000. For this calculation I took our estimated home value off Zillow and then multiplied by 5.5%. I based that on this article: https://www.energysage.com/news/solar-power-as-a-home-improvement-strategy/. I feel like the 5.5% is warranted given all the systems we have added to our home that increase its value by creating a stream of savings that will last for many years. That brings the total added value and savings to $63,000!

Note: We had a lot of help installing the heat pump systems from friends and family in the business. This saved us a lot of money. We also benefitted from tax rebates. We did choose high end EV’s which were more expensive. You can go all EV with cheaper used models, like we did with the LEAF, which was actually cheaper than the comparable ICE-the Juke.

The Financial Bottom Line

After only 7 years, we are over $8,000 ahead on our green investments. If we keep our house for the 20 years+ that we are planning, I estimate we will save somewhere between $84,000-$100,000! If we continue to save 20 tons of carbon per year, in 20 more years we will save over 400 tons of carbon from entering Earth’s atmosphere. Regardless of how you feel about climate change, this is a smart thing to do from a financial perspective. If we see the increase in energy prices that are currently being predicted, we may end up saving even more.

The Importance of Solar Panels

Adding all of these systems increases electricity use. We now use about 2.75 times more than we used in the past. Prior to 2019, we were using about 6800 kWh per year in our household. Now our household uses about 13,500, almost double. We also put about 5,000 kWh in our EV’s in 2025, for a total increase of 11,700 kWh. What saves money and carbon is using the solar panels to generate most of this increase. Some of the increase is due to caring for my elders, which involves a lot of driving (e.g. we provide my mother’s transportation and run all her errands). We think that our own personal use is about what we produce at this point, which was our goal.

Our gratitude to Travis and the guys at Great Basin Solar (https://www.greatbasinsolar.com/) for the awesome job they did designing and installing our system.

For More Information About Our EV’s

See this theme: https://rhondaashurst.com/category/driving-electric-cars/.

A Review of Our Heat Pump Systems

For a comprehensive review of our heat pump systems, see this post: https://rhondaashurst.com/2026/03/28/a-review-of-our-heat-pump-systems/.

To See the History of Going Solar

See this theme for the older posts: https://rhondaashurst.com/category/going-solar/page/2/.

See this theme for the newer posts: https://rhondaashurst.com/category/going-solar/.

Xeriscaping Our Yard

We also xeriscaped our yard from 2013-2023, which reduced our water usage by about 1/3. We live in a dry climate where water is precious, so we decided to change our lawns into a beautiful variety of shrubs, flowers, pavers with pots and DG. We love our new yard and it is a lot easier to take care of!

For more information on this journey, see this theme: https://rhondaashurst.com/category/xeriscaping-our-yard/.

A Review of Our Heat Pump Systems

We started our heat pump journey with a hot water heater in April 2021, followed by a heat pump HVAC system in June 2022, and a master bedroom mini-split in June 2023. The main goals of these systems are to (1) reduce carbon emissions by using the solar we produce on our roof to efficiently heat and cool our home and produce hot water and (2) keep us comfortable in the areas of the house we use.

We’ve had these systems for a few years now and have learned a lot through experience. We have definitely accomplished our goals, but we use some of the systems differently than we anticipated and there is one system we would not purchase again for our particular home.

Here’s a little summary table of our systems:

The heat pump water heater is definitely our star! It cost the least and saves the most natural gas-235 therms. It works beautifully and even helps cool our garage in the summers (it puts the heat from the air into the water). We would definitely do it again!

The heat pump HVAC was our only disappointment. We had thought it would save electricity over our electric zone heaters, but it didn’t. Essentially we learned that it is not efficient at temperatures below 40 degrees. We originally set the heat pump to run at 35 degrees and above. We discovered we were using a lot of electricity and it was running all the time when it was cold. In milder temperatures, it works well to keep the whole house warm at a steady temperature. However, that uses more electricity than our zone heaters because the HVAC is a bigger unit and uses more power. We don’t use our whole house, staying mostly in the front rooms during the day which are farthest from the HVAC unit. We always felt a little chilly in those areas, so we ended up using our Zone heaters some in addition to the heat pump. This ate up about 1 megawatt of electricity that we are now saving by just using the Zone heaters. Now we use the heat pump HVAC only when temperatures are above 40 degrees to do the morning lift, mostly during shoulder seasons. (We turn down our thermostat to 62 at night and raise it to 68 when we get up.) This saves us about 15 therms of gas, so not enough to justify getting a heat pump again. We use it for A/C in the summer months during the day to cool the house, but at night we switch to the minisplit in our bedroom. In hindsight, we would have just replaced our old A/C unit with a newer one rather than getting the heat pump HVAC. In talking with our neighbors, they use their heat pumps a little differently than we do (see HVAC blog link below). Each situation is different and heat pumps can be the way to go, depending on the household.

The minisplit in our bedroom we use during hot summer nights to keep us cool and drown out the drag racing on the ring road near our home. It makes a lovely white noise and keeps us cool, while saving about 500 kWh of electricity over what we used to use when we had the HVAC cooling the whole house at night. Now that unit doesn’t run at all at night, except if we have company and want to keep them cool.

The Zone heaters are not heat pump technology, but efficient electric space heaters. We use an EdenPURE infrared copper heater in our dining room area during the day. Many days we don’t need it in the later afternoon. It keeps the area I work in at the dining room table and our kitchen warm, but the open design of our home means it also adds heat to the living room where Scott works. There is a Lopi gas stove in the living room, which I use in the mornings for my practice and we use in the evenings until we head to bed to read. It also holds the house at 62 degrees overnight so the main HVAC doesn’t come on at night-it only does the morning lift to 68 degrees. We use a Dyson heater in our bedroom when we are reading at night and it is chilly; Scott uses it in the mornings when he is reading while I’m doing my practice. We already had the Zone heaters, so they didn’t cost us anything and save us about 125 therms of gas. We have learned that zone heating and cooling is the way to go in our house, given how we use it.

Carbon and Cost Savings

Each therm of natural gas produces 12 pounds of CO2. So saving 385 therms saves 4,600 pounds of CO2. We pay about $0.50 per therm on average, so it saves about $193 per year off our NV Energy bill. We have decreased our gas use by 63%.

NOTE: It does take a lot of electricity to power these units and that is worth considering before installing them. Our household electricity usage has almost doubled, going from 6800 kWh annually to 13,500 kWh, a 6,700 kWh increase. Our solar panels generate the electricity we use for our household so it doesn’t cost us extra and reduces our carbon footprint. If we didn’t have the panels, we would be paying about $544 more per year (1 kWh=$0.11: 6700 kWh increase in electricity use X $0.11=$737-$193 gas savings=$544). We would also have increased our carbon footprint by 4,100 pounds (1 kWh=1.3 pounds: 6700X1.3=8,700-4,600 pounds saved in gas= 4,100). It really works best to use these systems in conjunction with solar panels.

Overall, we are very pleased with our systems and both agree we are now more comfortable in our home than we were before making these changes, plus we are saving both carbon and money!

For more detailed information about our heat pump systems–how they work, the installation process, cost breakdowns, how we and our neighbors use them, see these previous posts which have been updated:

Heat Pump Hot Water Heater: https://rhondaashurst.com/2021/04/25/our-new-hybrid-heat-pump-water-heater/

Heat Pump HVAC: https://rhondaashurst.com/2023/03/03/our-new-hybrid-split-heat-pump-system/

Mini-Split: https://rhondaashurst.com/2024/03/11/our-mini-split/

Our Reviews for MyEVReview.com

We decided it was time to post reviews on our EV’s for a wider audience now that we have driven them for a few years. Here are the links to our reviews…

2022 Ioniq 5:

https://www.myevreview.com/review/hyundai/ioniq-5-2021-2024/best-car-i-ve-ever-had

2023 Nissan Ariya:

https://www.myevreview.com/review/nissan/ariya/nissan-surpasses-its-standards-with-the-big-brother-of-the-leaf

Below is the text of the reviews.

2022 Ioniq 5 Limited AWD

Best car I’ve ever had!

Pros:

  • Driving free on Nevada sunshine off our rooftop solar
  • No more gas stations! Charging takes about 1 minute–30 seconds to plug in and 30 seconds to unplug. The charging happens in our garage.
  • This car saves me $1500-$2000 and 7000 pounds of carbon per year over its comparable ICE car-the Hyundai Tucson.
  • Vehicle-to-load capability. There is a 110-volt plug in the back that we can use to plug in appliances, like our garage refrigerator, if we lose power for an extended period. This car also has the ability to be plugged into a bi-directional solar inverter/charger to power our whole house. We would consider this if our grid becomes unstable.
  • Power and handling-great on turns, ease of passing and getting on freeways, smooth and quiet ride.
  • Good in the snow, AWD works great
  • The anti-collision system which has saved me from accidents on more than one occasion. It will actually perform evasive maneuvers and apply the brakes-amazing!
  • Heated and ventilated front seats and heated steering wheel
  • Highway Driving Assist system is very good, even on curvy mountain roads. We use this as our road trip car.
  • Large battery gives us about 200-mile range on the road with 20% battery remaining, but our personal max is about 150 miles! Range is closer to 275 in town with regenerative braking.
  • Fast charging rate on superchargers. Free adaptor to charge on Tesla network. Works well, but charging port is in wrong location without extended cables. We prefer Electrify America stations, which are also faster than Tesla.
  • Spacious car with a luxury feel to it at this trim level. Passengers in the rear say it feels like a limo and love the large pano roof! We love that the pano has a cover to cut down on glare and heat when the sun is high. We like the light grey leatherette seats, which stay cooler in summer.
  • Fun and unique design. I love the blend of white, silver and black on the body. The rims are really cool! This car was designed from the ground up to be an EV. Hyundai used its 7-seat wheelbase, which makes this car feel very spacious. Big windows with good visibility and light. Pixel design used throughout including the headlights, gives it an 80’s retro style.
  • Lots of cargo space with the rear seats down.
  • Nice, low, two-paneled screen design—not in your face like a Tesla. Heads-up display helps keep my eyes on the road.
  • Great backup camera shows you direction you are heading. I also love the overview, 3-D rendering of the car in the screen that I can rotate with my finger in all directions and see exactly where the car is while parking.
  • It has controls for the most-used features on the dash and in the steering wheel, so everything is not embedded in the touchscreen. Easier to access while driving.
  • Adjustable front seats go to zero gravity and driver’s seat has a foot recliner as well.
  • Three levels of regenerative braking allow driver to choose the level they like. For example, I use level 3 for in town and level 1 for road trips. Regenerative braking both generates power for the car and reduces wear and tear on the brakes. It also helps with braking going down mountain passes, so you hardly use the brakes.
  • Great Bose sound system
  • Nice lighting inside and out-love the blue lights inside!

Cons:

  • No heated rear seats
  • Problems with charging on our Level 2 solar inverter/charger, so we use a 110 outlet  (Level 1) instead. This requires a little more prior planning but is accomplished easily while the car is parked in the garage. Given where the car is parked in the garage, it is actually more convenient to use the 110 outlet.
  • Charging access port is difficult to open—it’s automatic, but you have to press hard. It can be opened with the key FOB. The Level 3 charge port has a plug cover that can be hard to open. It does have a cute pixelated display that shows you how much charge the car has.
  • ICCU controller issues that have resulted in a few recalls. 12-volt batteries don’t last very long. Got stranded once in my mother’s garage-interesting towing adventure! Now we keep a smart battery jump starter for jumping the car in the back, in case the 12-volt dies, which it did again recently… This is our 2nd 12-volt battery in 4 years.
  • EV’s chew through tires faster than ICE’s and the tires are more expensive, but this will ultimately be offset by the lower maintenance costs.
  • Having to brake to shift from reverse to forward gear.
  • Apple CarPlay requires you to plug in your iPhone manually.
  • No rear window wiper. Not too bad in our high desert climate, but a bummer on mountain passes in snowstorms or in heavy rainstorms.
  • Noisy rear hatch, especially in winter. Fix is hokey at best, but better than it was before.
  • Rear passenger doors require a firm shove to close securely.

Story:

I’m in love with this car! It is my favorite car ever and a true joy to drive—fast and responsive. Of course, my favorite thing about it is that we drive free on Nevada sunshine, thanks to the solar panels on our roof, and emit zero harmful emissions. I love guilt-free driving and saving $1500-$2000 per year over an ICE car!

The Ioniq is spacious, comfortable and the Limited trim makes it feel like a luxury car. It has a helpful Highway Driving Assist system that makes road and freeway trips easier, especially on my chronic forearm tendonitis. I can take my hands off the wheel and roll and stretch my wrists, which really saves me on longer drives. I also like the regenerative braking which makes braking smoother, puts power back in the battery and doesn’t wear out your brakes.

The Ioniq 5 is capable of ultra-fast charging and can go from 20%-80% in 20 minutes on a 350 kW DC fast charger. This car can go comfortably 200 miles on a charge, leaving us with about 20 percent left in the battery. But we can’t last that long! What we have found is that our range in our 60’s is about 150 miles. After that, we need a break. We usually stop for about 30 minutes when we charge so we can take a walk and stretch, eat, and use the bathroom. Driving EV’s has actually made road trips more pleasant because we don’t keep trying to push on or only take a 10-minute gas station break. We arrive at our destination more rested and feel better. We have driven this car into a remote area in northern CA and have not had trouble finding charging stations along the way. We often use the car’s Level 1 cable to charge wherever we are staying.

In the past, I drove older cars with 100,000+ miles on them and no extra features. Driving this car is a real treat with all its bells and whistles and helpful systems (see the Pros above). It literally saved my mom and me when I missed a car coming across a roundabout in front of us, and the Ioniq turned the wheel and slammed on the brakes before I could react.

We bought our Ioniq in summer of 2022 after it swept the world car awards that year in its category. It has won multiple awards, and it deserves them all. We wanted to support Hyundai’s ingenuity in designing this unique and beautiful car, and its commitment to greening its product line. We didn’t even look at anything else. Now, after 4 years and 35,000 miles, we would do it all over again! I hope I can drive this car another 15+ years!

2023 Nissan Ariya Platinum AWD

Nissan surpasses its standards with the Big Brother of the LEAF

Pros:

  • Driving free on Nevada sunshine off our rooftop solar
  • No more gas stations! Charging takes about 1 minute–30 seconds to plug in and 30 seconds to unplug. The charging happens in our garage.
  • This car saves me $1500-$2000 and 7000 pounds of carbon per year over its comparable ICE car-the Nissan Murano.
  • Came with a high-end charging cable capable of 110 and 220 charging (level 1 & 2)
  • Power and handling-great on turns, ease of passing and getting on freeways, quiet ride.
  • Good in the snow, AWD works great
  • Heated and ventilated front seats, heated rear seats, and heated steering wheel
  • Higher clearance for off roading
  • Beautiful blue Nappa leather seats and blue suede dash. Car feels like a luxury car at this trim level. Seats feel like they wrap around me just right and are very comfortable.
  • Love the faux wood-grain trim that integrates haptic, touch-sensitive climate controls below the touch screen.
  • Nice, low, two-paneled screen design—not in your face like a Tesla
  • Good heads-up display, easy to read.
  • Rearview mirror can switch to using the back camera, which is great when the car is full to the roof with our stuff!
  • Wireless Apple CarPlay-ability to access iPhone via Siri
  • Nice lighting inside and out
  • Great Bose sound system
  • Beautiful pano roof with a sunroof in front half. We love that the pano has a cover to cut down on glare and heat when the sun is high.
  • The small hidden glovebox for valuables
  • Large battery gives us about 225-mile range on the road, but our personal max is about 150 miles! Range is closer to 300 in town with regenerative braking.
  • Plenty of cargo space, especially with the rear seats down.
  • Solid car with little maintenance and only one recall so far.
  • Easy to charge and we like the manual access door.
  • Ability to shift from reverse to forward drive without braking, but we wish the forward gear was a push forward and reverse was a push back. This would make more intuitive sense.
  • E-Step brake works well for going down mountain passes. We hardly have to use the brakes. Regenerative braking both generates power for the car and reduces wear and tear on the brakes. In town, we use the B drive option which has a lighter touch of braking than the E-Step.
  • Normal door handles, not pop-outs. I like that it locks and unlocks by touch on all doors.

Cons:

  • Stiffer suspension makes the ride a little rough.
  • Highway Driving Assist system (ProPILOT Assist 2.0) is quirky and beeps a lot which is annoying. We could never figure out how to stop it from slowing excessively into curves on mountain freeways. Hence, we don’t use it for our longer road trips. The eyes forward alert can be especially annoying, particularly when looking into curves.
  • Slow Level 3 charge rate.
  • Navigating the menus on the left screen with the steering wheel buttons and roller can be challenging and irritating.
  • EV’s chew through tires faster than ICE’s and the tires are more expensive, but this will ultimately be offset by the lower maintenance costs.
  • Too much shiny black on the exterior for my taste. I wish it had come in a silver color.

Story:

I bought the Ariya in 2023 to replace our Nissan LEAF. It was a 2016 and its range was shrinking, so we decided it was time for a newer EV with a bigger battery. The Platinum Ariya is AWD and has an 87-kWh battery which can easily take us 225 miles, leaving 20% in the battery. This car is a joy to drive—fast, responsive and good around curves. I love the power and how easy it is to pass and merge on to the freeway. It’s also good in the snow and has been a very reliable car, with only one recall.

Of course, my favorite thing about it is that we drive free on Nevada sunshine, thanks to the solar panels on our roof, and emit zero harmful emissions. I love guilt-free driving and saving $1500-$2000 per year over an ICE car!

I chose Nissan because they are experienced in EV manufacturing, and they have done a beautiful job with this car. At this trim level, it is like driving a luxury car. The Nappa blue leather seats and suede dash are beautiful and unique. One of the things that sold me on the car was how well the driver’s seat fits me. Both front seats are completely adjustable and have just the right amount of wrap to make me feel secure. There are other nice touches like the faux wood-grain trim that integrates haptic, touch-sensitive climate controls. The hidden glove box that slides out with the touch of a haptic button is a great place to store valuables. The screens are low profile and have a nice, curved design to them. The lighting inside and outside is very cool. There is plenty of space for rear seat passengers and a good HVAC system in the back as well as the front. With the seats down there is plenty of cargo space. This is the car we take for local trips when we haul half our house with us to an Airbnb. That’s when we change the rearview mirror to use the rear backup camera instead of the mirror. This is a really handy feature when you can’t see out the back window!

I really enjoy driving this car. It is mostly used for around town driving, and I can go several days without charging. I estimate I could get 300 miles out of a 100% charge in town. After 3 years and 23,000 miles, I am pleased with choosing the Ariya and hope to drive it for many years to come.