Roddy, maybe take a course in economics 101, or a business course, or maybe accounting 101. The idea that you can just talk about any investment and say it’s free once its paid for is not reflective of real life, or real economics. In most cases storage would require credit which would have to be repaid over time. And if someone could fully pay ahead of time, there is what is called “lost opportunity cost”. In other words there is a cost for using money. If this is the level of the conversaion here, it is childish. Just goes to show once again, why waste my time here?
Let’s bypass hypotheticals for a moment, and look at off-grid living today: I have friends who live off-grid in Tehachapi, California, ground-zero for wind energy, with plenty of sunshine as well.
It’s well-understood by these off-gridders that their largest electricity expense, by far, is buying, then maintaining, batteries. They usually have a special room or storage shed for the batteries. The initial purchase price is huge, then they slowly go bad, losing capacity with their limited number of charging cycles. In ten years they need all new batteries. It is never free. It is always a huge expense. And the word is, if you have grid power, it is always cheaper than your own self-produced renewable electricity, especially if you are talking about battery storage versus real-time use.
What you are suggesting is one more example of “All ya gotta do is” thinking:
“All ya gotta do is pay for it then it’s free!” Wheee! Maybe you can find a way to steal the money from someone else! At gunpoint! Everything can be “free”! Yeah, that’s it!
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