Most of the hardware itself was free(business decommissioned) or auction wins (4.5TB of ram out of a $600 auction, selling some servers paid the whole auction off). So quite cheap in that respect. And it's not strictly private use. Lots of functions in there to keep my business going/make it easier to track taxes/auto billing clients/email/etc. Though only typically operationally, not as an income generator itself (eg, not hosting other companies stuff so much).

And yeah, if energy was 10x more expensive (I think it was you or someone else that said $0.60 per kWh?) I'd probably rethink my situation/stance a bit.

But 3kW service is awfully low. Standard around here is 200amp service to a house (at 120v, so 24kVA service), 100amp (12kVA) if you have gas utilities handling range/heating, as A/C is heavily required where I live. My PV setup is rated 15.9kW, though caps out at 11kW on the best days. I can't imagine living off of 3kW. My desktop uses 1/10th of that. My idle usage in my house minus the servers is ~2kW. I can see why you're squeezing Watts. Some googling shows Italy being a country that does this... You probably are in similar situation as them where A/C isn't really common, heating and cooking isn't electric based, etc... Most of the year I'm not allowed to even make a fire, so I'm forced to rely on electricity.

But no SUV here... 1 hybrid sedan for this family of 4. Gas costs too much and we drive too little.