Do you have a place to store that water up hill already? Then no. Don't have a place to store that water already? Then yes. Pumped storage is great if you have reservoirs or a place to put them, and the water to pump between them. But those conditions don't really happen that often.
They take up less space, and can be done without the hill.
I have seen some really shockingly cheap homemade stored water systems on YouTube (I’m into that kind of thing so there’s a lot of it in my feed) so if you own a hill and have sufficient recharge even in winter then it’s super cheap install that makes even a meagre battery seem expensive. But you have to have the terrain.
Cheap in terms of capital, but home hydro tends to take quite a bit of labor and maintenance over time. If you look at that stuff as a fun hobby or YouTube content it’s no big deal, but economically your labor isn’t free.
I’ve got an usually good location for small scale hydro, there was even a mill on the property, but it just doesn’t seem worth it to me.
Yeah different perspectives. Some people find diy easy and are quite happy to tinker with things. Where I live is currently suffering a wild boar infestation and I’m happily setting up an electric fence system for basically no money at all whilst a neighbour just paid a lot of money for someone to install it for them. I wish I had a good property for hydro or stored water batteries!