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Comment by ncmncm | Hacker News Reader

The overwhelming majority of storage used will not be batteries, unless some new chemistry's cost is very low.

Large-scale storage will be very cheap, on par with panels. It really is just civil engineering. Any competent civil engineer can sketch a practical, cheap storage system using only century-old tech.

Hand-wringing over utility-scale storage amounts to concern trolling.

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What kind of tech would be used for storage?

Not the OP but dams and resevoirs is what he is talking about, I assume. Pump water uphill while the sun is out, let it feed back downhill and generate power overnight. It is century old stuff and it is very much validated to work.

There are numerous practical methods.

Not the person you're replying to but pumped hydro is the most primitive I know of.

Also: why must the highly variable renewables share the grid with highly variable demand, use them to make hydrogen (only when the sun is shining/wind is blowing), feed that into a totally separate power plant, simple to manage - if renewables really get cheap who cares if it's inefficient.

Hydrogen will be one storage medium, mostly stored underground where geology favors it. Tanked anhydrous ammonia will be common, with more ordered from tropical solar farms when local tankage runs low. Underground and underwater compressed air will also be common. Liquified air might be.

In addition to pumped hydro, you can use flywheels or even lifting heavy weights really high up.

Probably neither of those will find substantial use.

For medium duration storage (days to weeks):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed-air_energy_storage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal%E2%80%93air_electrochemi...

For long duration storage: hydrogen, ammonia.

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