I went through the math and indeed - in Wyoming, where land is $660 per acre, assuming water and structures holding it are free, the break even point is at 17cm in potential energy.
That's actually amazingly cheap, because the absolute worst land in my country is almost three times as expensive.
I guess then it's the structures and labour here that potentially are the deciding factor.
Your typical 18650 li-ion battery stores around 12.25Wh - that's enough energy to lift a metric tonne of material 4.5 meters high.
For practical capacities the cost of land becomes significant.