Can you elaborate a bit here? Neglecting _detailed_ info about storage conversion costs, etc, it's tough to understand the "all-in" cost for storage over time.
At home, I'm fanatical about using bog-standard AA/AAA rechargeable batteries for as many things as possible (anything with a micro-USB charger is basically "e-waste waiting to happen"), and thinking through any kind of home-supplement for solar, batteries, etc. makes me think that the "waste" of house-scale / grid-scale batteries for storage makes the math not work out.
Rough googling puts ~30kWh batteries at ~$15-30k, which: even if you think of it as having a 30-year service life, still works out to ~$50-100/mo in just battery depreciation.
Similarly with cars (eg: PHEV). First 5 years? Great! Next 10 years? ...a ticking time bomb of "must be replaced" with the battery representing an exorbitant percentage of the vehicle value. $500 of tires on a $5000 car is one thing, but a $5000 battery on a car seems like a net negative environmentally and financially?
Solar PV operates 10-30% of the time (depending on location). Without storage, this naturally limits direct solar contribution to about 20% of energy demand. Going beyond requires expensive storage solutions.
Your argument mixes "easy" and "cheap". Storage can be "easy" and you have plenty of choice: batteries, pumped, thermal, chemical, name it. If you have a large enough east-west country (hint), you might also invest in transport infrastructure to move energy where it is required so you don't have to store as much. This is also "easy", maybe moreso than storage because we've been doing it for so long. As to whether these easy things are cost effective when compared to other solutions is a completely different issue.
none of those storage solutions are easy for grid scale. For batteries you need whole factories, pumped requires permits and tone of cement, chemical is like hydrogen with low efficiency. All of those are expensive which for government is synonymous with difficult.
Being expensive is the _easiest_ thing for most governments. It's often a requirement! i.e. As a contractor, bid too cheaply and you will not be taken seriously.
This doesn't apply to energy grid scale projects. Also that is why energy sector in most countries is privatized. Take Germany with total energy costs that would be like ~10% of the federal budget (about 40 billion euros). Making energy even more expensive would only lead to further deindustrialization and lower gdp making it politically non viable. Also, you can't just throw money and buy storage like with typical government contracts - it requires building entire new industries (like Germany's struggles with hydrogen infrastructure).
Depending on your energy mix, you can go much further than 20% solar before needing storage. What's actually necessary is not storage, but generation which can ramp down and ramp up fast enough to compensate for the predictable daily ramps of solar generation (on top of the daily power use ramps). AFAIK, hydroelectric is one of the fastest (so much that pumped hydroelectric power plants can be used as storage), while coal and nuclear are among the slowest.
For cooling (datacenters and other) you can chill water when the sun is out. And mostly passively cool the heated water when the sun is down if water is scarce. Plumbing and insulation for cooling reservoirs probably degrades a lot slower than batteries. I'm not sure about chiller plant wear and tear vs battery degradation
At home, I'm fanatical about using bog-standard AA/AAA rechargeable batteries for as many things as possible (anything with a micro-USB charger is basically "e-waste waiting to happen"), and thinking through any kind of home-supplement for solar, batteries, etc. makes me think that the "waste" of house-scale / grid-scale batteries for storage makes the math not work out.
Rough googling puts ~30kWh batteries at ~$15-30k, which: even if you think of it as having a 30-year service life, still works out to ~$50-100/mo in just battery depreciation.
Similarly with cars (eg: PHEV). First 5 years? Great! Next 10 years? ...a ticking time bomb of "must be replaced" with the battery representing an exorbitant percentage of the vehicle value. $500 of tires on a $5000 car is one thing, but a $5000 battery on a car seems like a net negative environmentally and financially?