A dead account replied to this in good faith so let me address this as I can't comment directly: > [Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station] uses sewage; people

A dead account replied to this in good faith so let me address this as I can't comment directly: > [Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station] uses sewage; people are very regular at producing waste water. Not really, no. Germany for example ran very successful campaigns for limiting water use in the 1990s and earlier and a lot of household appliances (shower heads, faucets, toilets) were made "more efficient". As a consequence some municipalities had issues from sewers running dry due to too little waste water and had to flush them with (clean) water to continue operating them. This likely won't turn into a problem in the US in the near future but if your plan hinges on consumers being excessively wasteful with resources, you might run into some snags as soon as those resources become more limited or more expensive. > Pumped hydro can work very well to smooth out variability from the baseload. Yes, that's an energy storage technology that isn't a battery. The reason Switzerland makes heavy use of it is that it only works when you have a landscape with a lot of changes in altitude (i.e. large hills or mountains). It doesn't help in very flat regions. It's a great solution but it's just one solution. We need more. And we also need to improve the grids themselves.