> the question really comes down to what should we be spending money on to get "better storage"? What are the best solutions for long-term local storage?
The solution I'm proposing is basically 'the best place to spend your money on storage is to not spend it on storage yet'
If the goal is to reduce emissions asap, then focusing on the strategy that removes x% of 100% of the emissions rather than 100% of y% of the emissions makes sense unless there are enough resources/money that y% is more than x%. And storage is currently expensive enough that you need many times as much money for this to be true to 99.9% confidence.
Getting a wind + solar system that has at least y watts at least eg. 90% of the time is remarkably affordable already and still going down.
In excellent climates new solar costs less per MWh than fuel for a gas turbine (and is not far off fuel for a nuclear reactor). Wind is not much more. Distribution, dealing with less than ideal sites and oversupply increase the cost, but an ideal mix has very little storage (4-12 hours) which can be delivered by lithium batteries.
By relying on the existing fossil fuel/hydro/nuclear/whatever to pick up the last 10% for now, you can replace more coal/oil more quickly than other strategies. During this build all storage technologies where they make the most sense so that when that last 10% is needed, prices will have dropped. I'm fairly sure some mix of green hydrogen and green ammonia burning in those same turbines will be one of the winners (ammonia in particular has negligible marginal cost of capacity allowing for a strategic reserve, and will be needed to replace fossil fuel derived fertilizer anyway).
In the unlikely case that there's an overnight $2 trillion investment in new wind/solar/powerlines and production capacity to match in the US then choosing a dispatchable power source from some or all of: expensive green hydrogen, expensive abundant existing batteries, expensive pumped hydro, and expensive nuclear or immediately going all in on commercialising every vaguely promising electrolyser tech becomes the priority.
The solution I'm proposing is basically 'the best place to spend your money on storage is to not spend it on storage yet'
If the goal is to reduce emissions asap, then focusing on the strategy that removes x% of 100% of the emissions rather than 100% of y% of the emissions makes sense unless there are enough resources/money that y% is more than x%. And storage is currently expensive enough that you need many times as much money for this to be true to 99.9% confidence.
Getting a wind + solar system that has at least y watts at least eg. 90% of the time is remarkably affordable already and still going down.
In excellent climates new solar costs less per MWh than fuel for a gas turbine (and is not far off fuel for a nuclear reactor). Wind is not much more. Distribution, dealing with less than ideal sites and oversupply increase the cost, but an ideal mix has very little storage (4-12 hours) which can be delivered by lithium batteries.
By relying on the existing fossil fuel/hydro/nuclear/whatever to pick up the last 10% for now, you can replace more coal/oil more quickly than other strategies. During this build all storage technologies where they make the most sense so that when that last 10% is needed, prices will have dropped. I'm fairly sure some mix of green hydrogen and green ammonia burning in those same turbines will be one of the winners (ammonia in particular has negligible marginal cost of capacity allowing for a strategic reserve, and will be needed to replace fossil fuel derived fertilizer anyway).
In the unlikely case that there's an overnight $2 trillion investment in new wind/solar/powerlines and production capacity to match in the US then choosing a dispatchable power source from some or all of: expensive green hydrogen, expensive abundant existing batteries, expensive pumped hydro, and expensive nuclear or immediately going all in on commercialising every vaguely promising electrolyser tech becomes the priority.