> system already pays for itself
No, it yields savings. This is a massive difference.
> You also likely don’t want to be an early adopter of the newest tech anyway if this is a concern for you
This is a real concern for any long-term investment, particularly when we're talking at utility/industrial scales. Dismissing it like this is basically arguing that solar is too new to be properly talked about, which is nonsense.
I guess, though, the actual “solar” part of the solar set up is by far the cheapest part.
The vast majority of the set up costs are just getting electrification done right.
Like, even if LNG becomes crazy cheap, a battery set up will still save you money in the long run just by allowing off-peak demand.
This is why I’m confused: for this to me remotely a bad investment, basically everything possible has to go wrong for you, whereas the risks associated with carbon energy production are very obvious and very likely.
Do you have some more likely counter scenario?
> even if LNG becomes crazy cheap, a battery set up will still save you money in the long run just by allowing off-peak demand
See Uruguay. Bet heavily on renewables [1]. Baked in a high cost [2].
If LNG becomes crazy cheap and you're stuck with expensive solar and battery, the countries with cheaper power will eat your industry. On a household level, you wasted money. The alternate you who didn't put money into the solar and battery set-up could have earned more from other investments and had cheaper power.
Put another way: if you remove the decommissioning costs, the same argument could be used for nuclear. Once you've built it, it's sort of "free." Except of course it's not. Building it took a lot of work.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Uruguay#Electricity
[2] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Uruguay/electricity_price...
Per your sources it looks like they are subsidising industry use of electricity with household usage:
Household electricity prices are 157% of average in SA, and 200% of industry prices. That's not a case of renewables backfiring, it's a case of strange policy resulting in weird pricing.
> they are subsidising industry use of electricity with household usage
Germany had to do the same thing when their power costs threatened de-industrialisation. The base cost of electricity in Uruguay is higher than its neighbors’ in an environmentally-wonderful but economically-problematic way.
Germany made the worst possible mistake. They decided to decommission all their nuclear power in one year "for the environment"
Then they started importing all their energy from neighbouring countries including:
Nuclear power from France
Coal (!) power from Poland
Hydro from Sweden
Etc,etc.
The anti nuclear crowd in Germany fucked the environment to sate their delusional beliefs.
Electricity prices in Sweden tripled because of that and still haven't returned to normal.
Worst decision in the history of the German nation! (This statement is true, but only on a technicality: the current nation of Germany is young!)