Chile Forum

I figured Chile had plenty coal and gas power plants, which emphasized my point, the cost of electricity will increase, and inflation will continue to devalue your savings for paying for these years of grid power, and investments that would earn enough interest to off set that inflation become risky and could possible lose principle or at the least tie up your money. Not to mention you are at the mercy of someone else for your power. If a line goes down, or they hike prices, you are screwed. So again there are other factors to consider, you can't simply do a cost analysis based on today's energy prices and your lump sum of money that would buy x amount of years at that price. Even assuming you can invest the lump sum into some kind of investment that will perform better than the stock market has lately, which will keep up with inflation and maintain the buying power of the lump sum, you still have to account for rising energy costs. So X amount of years at this lump sum price is simplistic logic. And we don't know how much power will increase in price from the grid, so you are taking a gamble. That risk is at least equal to the possible break down and repair costs of your own power generation system. Marine deep cycle batteries in the USA cost $50 to $75 bucks.

Might be a bit more expensive but use hydrogen as the storage method. Making the gas is so simple kids do it in grade 8 science; storage is relatively easy and safe if the proper precautions are taken.

There was an engineer from New Jersey that built a 5 000 sqft off grid home (power grid only) right in the suburbs. Your best option would be build at a minimum a dual system micro hydro & solar. If you were to build on the coast I would add a wind generator too. That way 95% of the time you will be producing sufficient power and they other 5% you are running on fuel cells.