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Something like Pumped Storage Hydroelectricity? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...

There are several of these facilities in the US, although no new ones have been built in quite some time. I believe that as the price of solar goes down, more of these styles of facilities will open.

The trouble with pumped storage is that it's usually only economical to do where you have suitable geography which can be economically connected to the grid. It's by no means useless, but other storage mechanisms are needed.

Yes, mountain lakes as batteries was covered in a recent episode of Planet Money. US and China both have dam systems online that can act as giant batteries:

https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...

Pillars, not that I know of. NPR did do a story recently about Hydro-electric energy storage though:

https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...

Yes there's a documentary on Netflix about modern islands... There are few places where it's already done successfully

Water is already used for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...