Let's counter that with some real statistics: Batteries are being produced at TWH/year scale now. Probably crossing into 1.5-2 TWH/year this year. That's new b

Let's counter that with some real statistics: Batteries are being produced at TWH/year scale now. Probably crossing into 1.5-2 TWH/year this year. That's new batteries added every year. This is projected to grow over the next few years. Most of those batteries have thousands of cycles of lifetime. Tens of thousands for some of the newer chemistries (e.g. sodium ion). Overall electricity production is 25-30 TWH per year; for the entire planet. So 25000 TWH. That's going to go up of course but it's a nice number to work with. Those batteries can cycle multiple times per day. Lets assume once a day (they'd be able to do multiple of course). So you get about 365 TWH of power cycled per day out of 1 TWH of batteries (discharged and charged again). You'd charge them with cheap solar, wind, geothermal, and whatever else you have available; whenever you have that available. About 70 TWH of battery would be enough to get to 25000 TWH per year. We'll have that probably in the early 2040s. Once we hit tens of TWH of battery produced per year that won't take long. Of course electricity production and demand will increase as well. Of course, we'll have plenty of other power sources. So, most of those batteries will just be sitting there fully charged most of the time and we won't actually be cycling most of them all that much. That's a lot of potential energy. Combine that with cables, dynamic pricing, demand shaping, and a few other things and the implied need for long term storage melts away.