Rate of recharge is the limiting factor of the total amount of energy you can release from a dam without reducing the total amount of water in the reservoir ove

Rate of recharge is the limiting factor of the total amount of energy you can release from a dam without reducing the total amount of water in the reservoir over time. Hoover dam may be able to produce 2GW of power, but if it averages more than 500 MW it will drop in water level over time (actually less than that, since it's already reaching record low fill levels). True, rainfall is not constant throughout the year. But it doesn't really matter in the big picture: the total amount of energy you can produce with the dam without lowering fill levels is fixed, and it isn't changed by overproduction. Overproduction doesn't help you here: if you have 3 GW of solar energy and 2 GW of electricity demand, you can't use the remaining 1 GW to refill Hoover Dam. If you produce enough solar to meet demand, you can shut off hoover dam's turbines. But if you overproduce - if you produce more energy than the grid needs - it's wasted, you can't use excess energy to refill the dam beyond just shutting off the turbines. > That’s an outdated estimate for last year even just EV’s broke 500 GWh. "Automotive lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery demand increased by about 65% to 550 GWh in 2022" Demand, not production. Just under 500 GWh of batteries was produced, a good chunk of demand went unfulfilled. If anything, all your source shows is that grid storage is even more infeasible because we can't even satisfy EV's storage needs. > As I mentioned that’s a monumental overestimate No, if anything it's an optimistic underestimate. 12 hours is just enough for diurnal storage. But you also need storage to offset seasonal fluctuations.