It's interesting how many dirt cheap solutions are cropping up to deal with the intermittency of solar and wind that can easily take the weight off pumped stora

It's interesting how many dirt cheap solutions are cropping up to deal with the intermittency of solar and wind that can easily take the weight off pumped storage and grid-batteries: >Seasonal heat storage is useful for district heating. With district heating, heat is produced and stored in a centralized location then piped via hot water to buildings for air and water heating. The alternative to district heating is using heat pumps in each building. The study found that the more district heating available, the easier it was to keep the electric grid stable at lower cost since it reduced the need for batteries to provide immediate electricity to heat pumps. >Another interesting finding was that, with a fully renewable system, charging battery-electric vehicles during the day was less expensive for the grid than charging them at night because day charging matched well with solar electricity production. I remember also reading about how Germany would dial aluminium smelters' usage up and down also depending upon grid output too - a simple industrial process that requires a huge amount of electricity but that isnt particularly sensitive to when it is used.