> 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.