Not my expertise, but my understanding is that district heating is a very very efficient way to store electricity, such that the inefficiencies in transmission

Not my expertise, but my understanding is that district heating is a very very efficient way to store electricity, such that the inefficiencies in transmission are mitigated in part by the storage efficiency. This allows you to more reliably depend on energy sources that don't have 100% uptime. That said, I think most of this applies to heated water, not steam.