[andruby]

> Filling the gaps left by intermittent production with storage

That will work for shifting day & night, but I don't see any feasible energy solutions for summer-winter shifting, or even to bridge weeks with limited sunshine (and/or wind).

There are large populations living relatively far from the equator, which see huge differences in daylight during summer & winter.

We should try to get as much energy from renewables like sun & wind, but I think we'll still need another form of energy generation. Energy storage can help us increase the upper limit of renewables in the total yearly mix though.

[telchar]

There are different types of storage with different trade-offs. In my opinion we'll eventually see lower-efficiency but low cost-per-kWh storage like CO2->hydrocarbon storage used for longer-term seasonal or disaster-preparedness storage, while higher-efficiency higher cost-per-kWh or limited-capacity means like battery and pumped hydro will be primarily used for short term day/night storage.

The cost of inefficiency is a function of energy stored, not storage capacity per se, so effectively its cost scales as (storage capacity) * (# of times charged/discharged). Therefore low efficiency isn't particularly expensive for long-term storage.

So maybe we'll see gas turbines continue to provide power that ultimately is sourced from wind and solar via hydrocarbon conversion, but that's perfectly OK since it would be carbon neutral.

The upshot is this is all a reason to be sanguine about solar and wind.

[svnt]

If we could reduce our energy dependence on burning things to use cases where it actually makes sense to burn things (such as heating in extreme regions), we could basically consider the problem solved.

[konschubert]

Power to Gas is the answer to that.