Indeed. So let me flesh it out a bit more. You can run a validator using 100W (conservative figure) of energy and an Intel NUC with 2 TiB SSD (you can even run it on a Raspberry Pi but no need to be too greedy in HW resources).

That's 876 kWh in a year and 1000 $ in HW. Energy costs vary from place to place but let's pick 0,2 $ / kWh. Which results in 175 $/year in energy. The computer can easily last you 5 years if not more, so 200 $ per year. Let's add internet costs too. 30$ x 12 = 360 $ / year.

Those are the operational costs. Once you have 32 ETH this is pretty negligible.