Thank you, good analysis. That could well be the reason that SH owns a fleet of Teslas, who is one of his competitors.
in short, yes
There are pockets for almost anything. There are those of us that like cars, furniture, art, antiquities, gardening, gadgets etc. with no expectation of any return on the investment other than the satisfaction of owning it, seeing it operate, tinkering with it, showing it off etc.
I know some folks that set up their home with all the latest energy saving technology, solar hot water, solar... the works. It will never pay for itself, and that was never the intention. They also own the latest fuel efficient car - whilst its environmentally friendly, they will never save the money in fuel than the added cost of the car.
We all have our vices, and we all get tempted by the latest-thing-to-have.
Early adopters are often at the upper end of the income spectrum and they can afford to give in to temptation earlier than most.
Then of course there are cases where buying a battery makes complete economic sense...
... in a country like Australia, it can cost significantly more to connect remote properties to the grid than to buy 1, 2 or even 3 ZCells + Solar. I see this as a no-brainer and I see the ZCell as being highly competitive here due its large capacity, temperature tolerance, long life and stable capacity over time (i.e. no need to over provision up front).
It makes less economic sense the closer you are to the grid, or if you are already grid connected, but even then there are cases such as pharmacies that can lose $50,000+ of goods if they face a prolonged grid outage as they are required by law to discard temperature sensitive medications if the refrigerator drops below a certain temperature. Most businesses will face some form of loss during a power outage, hence the ZCell is also target at SMEs.
Then we have those of us who have made significant investments in solar already and are facing tariff cuts. Many early adopters and environmentally conscious types, already have older batteries and suitable inverters. This is why Redflow set up a battery lab with the intention of making ZCell compatible with most inverter brands, including older ones. These early adopters are only facing the cost of the battery, not solar + inverters etc. and will naturally look to buying new batteries as the old ones die out.
Then we have the question of future grid prices, which remain highly uncertain. Its becoming clearer that the grid will undergo significant changes in function in the very near future, acting more as a trading platform for decentralized electricity generation rather than a centralized distribution system.
There are predictions of the grids 'death spiral': as more of us leave the grid, the fixed costs of the grid are shared by an ever diminishing customer base, leading to more and more rapid defection from the grid and an exponential increase in costs.
What I see will happen is that there are areas where the grid will 'disappear', primarily in remote locations. There are countries were the development of the grid will stagnate and simply not reach certain regions. So, in that sense, predictions of the grids 'death spiral' will be region-dependent.
In suburban environments, the grid will evolve to an efficient trading platform (there are some places where this is already the case).
The big change that is coming is that affordable electric vehicles are only a year or two away, notably the Tesla model 3 with its 400,000+ pre-orders. As these cars swamp suburbia, most will need to be charged on a daily basis, and I think this will be the main driver for an electricity trading platform.
The cost of traded electricity will be time dependent, but will almost certainly go up overall as electric vehicles place an ever increasing demand on the network, often at the same time (~6pm to ~7am). I can see it making economic sense to buy ZCells not only for ones own consumption but to recharge neighbors cars at a profit.
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