| > If you are off-grid and adapt everything to using solar and battery then you can get "free operating cost" with enormous costs and loss of reliability. Well, it turns out that the costs are not at all enormous, and I don't understand why you think the reliability will be less. I've already had one major and several minor unplanned grid power outages since I moved here 6 months ago. Are in-home batteries less reliable than the grid? I haven't heard that, and I don't know why they would be. I think the payback time for the system I'm looking at (panels + batteries) will be ten years, but I'd much prefer to reduce my emissions than to save money through buying dirty (black coal) power from the grid. Of course there is the embodied energy and CO2 of the system and I haven't looked at that (yet). I'm still starting out. That said, power prices are rising dramatically in Australia, and battery prices have been falling for years, so in 6-12 months time when I actually purchase the system, I think it's likely that the payback time will be significantly lower. The point being that, at some point, the price will come down to the point where people will take out loans to buy these systems, because the loan repayments will be lower than the cost of buying power off the grid. That's the opex/capex equation kicking in, of course, which I didn't think was trying to be fancy at all. |