I think most people are delusional about this, including the operators talked about in the article. I believe this is mostly posturing and people trying to find

I think most people are delusional about this, including the operators talked about in the article. I believe this is mostly posturing and people trying to find ways to get some of that sweet subvention money flowing for renewable tech and associated. In other words, there are some profits to be made and for this they need to pretend that they don't know better. Because as you said, this is not sustainable. The numbers don't work, if we only build battery with renewables someone has to lose power somewhere some of the time. I worked around a small model with rather optimistic assumptions with zero concern for cost and a focus on efficient consumption to determine what would be required to make a single 1–2-person habitation completely sustainable off grid but with most of the modern confort. I used past weather data and sunshine/wind values. It doesn't work. The number of batteries you need is ridiculous and unrealistic when you scale up the model, that's before considering costs that are just insane. I think renewables are a good technology especially because we can use the peaks to our advantage and work/organise society around that. In particular car battery charging and air conditioning are 2 very good candidates. Realistically we still need reliable technology to ensure baseload at all times, especially at night. Personally, I think nuclear is just that but just saying that word is so political that people lose all rationality it seems, so we get sucks in meaningless debates and projections... In a weird twist, most pro-renewables are also anti electric car, I swear ideological people are really unbelievable. I think the world became too political in general (a feminine way of "solving" problems) but in particular the field of energy is overrun by politics; which is kind of funny when you consider that the core skill to make everything work is rationality. But I guess when we will get grid shut down like in South Africa they will agree that batteries don't work. It will be too late though...