For some reason people's intuitive estimates of pumped storage/dams are completely off the mark. This study concerns Germany, but the same orders of magnitude a

For some reason people's intuitive estimates of pumped storage/dams are completely off the mark. This study concerns Germany, but the same orders of magnitude apply to California: https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/144985 https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/144985 >Based on German hourly feed-in and consumption data for electric power, this paper studies the storage and buffering needs resulting from the volatility of wind and solar energy. It shows that joint buffers for wind and solar energy require less storage capacity than would be necessary to buffer wind or solar energy alone. The storage requirement of over 6,000 pumped storage plants, which is 183 times Germany’s current capacity, would nevertheless be huge.