Swings and spikes in generation is considered the achilles heel of renewables, but electrified heating on a smarter grid will go a long way to making that probl

Swings and spikes in generation is considered the achilles heel of renewables, but electrified heating on a smarter grid will go a long way to making that problem go away. Thermal storage is by far the cheapest energy storage solution currently on the market (or even on the horizon), but it's limited that without highly specialized equipment you can only use thermal storage for thermal activity. Great news, turns out we use a huge amount of energy for heating and cooling. I'd happily install a bunch of highly insulated water tanks in my basement and use an air (or ground) source heat pump at times electricity is cheap (or renewables are spiking the grid) to store a ton of heat that is slowly released through my house as needed. For cooling there are already commercial solutions that will freeze water when overnight with cheap electricity and then cool the building during the day using the energy required to melt the ice. The renewable future is far more distributed than our current grid, with generation and storage much physically closer to their actual usage.