You just contradicted yourself. You said a solar facility plus a storage facility has a cost of $120-180 (this is not neccessarily correct as in some places yo

You just contradicted yourself. You said a solar facility plus a storage facility has a cost of $120-180 (this is not neccessarily correct as in some places you might need to store 70% of energy). Then said you could not combine them (eliminating half of the conversion loss and shrinking the transforming electronics) for less than $200. Additionally storage isn't increasing in price. Lithium is. And LiFePO4 is already being replaced for this purpose with sodium with prussian blue and carbon (which also does not need copper bus bars). Manufacturing hits GW scale next year, and price parity will follow shortly thereafter. You are right in that solar is largely used without storage. That is because solar + storage is only marginally cheaper than heavily subsidized and insured for free nuclear and thus is unaffordable. It is also because a mix of solar and wind is a vastly better strategy for reducing emissions with limited resources than anything else. You also haven't included electrolysers in your calculus (which have just started doing what the solar and battery market did over the last year). Steam engines are obsolete. Throwing away 70% of your energy with a huge complex machine which wears out quickly due to operating conditions just doesn't work.