There are already several thermal storage solar facilities in operation, with more under construction. The best of these can maintain output all night long. One is in Spain, one in Australia, a prototype I believe is still operational in California.
The real question is if economies of scale and the ability to shift demand across geographic areas offsets the cost of an electric grid + administrative overhead. Based on the constantly increasing rate of Solar deployments I can only assume this actually works out just fine.
What areas? I've checked a few and it wasn't remotely close.
It starts being doable if you are willing to do things like load shed during the night - but I'm not. The goal would be for a zero impact on my lifestyle storage system (e.g. multiple days of storage for A/C use during cloudy/stormy weather, no 'no laundry days', etc.) and that simply isn't realistic yet.
I find this important since when I do go off-grid, I think it's immoral for me to expect the poorer folks who can't afford such equipment to subsidize my free battery by keeping an "emergency" backup connection like pretty much all "off grid" folks I personally know. Yes, it gets real cheap when you don't have to size for an expected worst-case - but that's not very interesting to me.
That said - some of the DIY hacker style projects are getting rather close. It's very tempting to start looking for a couple old Tesla battery packs and the like these days and go it alone. If that's the case, I expect within 5-10 years it will actually be doable commercially off the shelf.
Next installation costs quotes are often insane, but basic equipment costs are not even close to that. A ~10KW system for ~1,600 kWh/month as a reasonable off grid system that's well above most homes normal usage levels and depending on battery power that should be well under 20,000$ before government incentives.
Now, you can start running the numbers on payback periods and whatnot, but it's close enough you need to consider your local rates not just dismiss it out of hand. Sure, you could use fewer panels but panels are only ~1/3 of the system price so no need to scrimp on them.
The final figure shows storage at various MW sizes for 4 hours, 8 hours, and 10 hours.
That said, we have almost no information about this bidding process, so we can't read too much into it.
But once you take into account that these are for projects that enter service in 2023, it makes a lot of sense. By then lithium ion batteries will be less than half the cost they are right now.
Vanadium prices have also been skyrocketing, so its likely that vanadium redox flow batteries may reach industrial scales by then, and could be as cheap or cheaper than lithium ion.
Solar production is greatest around midday. There is a lag time of about 6 hours between greatest production and demand, and the storage systems are designed to accommodate this.
Capturing carbon from coal power plants adds cost to something that is already not cost effective. Capturing carbon in the atmosphere likely will require huge amounts of power - and if its not 100% renewable power its kind of pointless.
Nuclear is better than coal or natural gas, but there have been some high profile failures lately and the lead time on new nuclear is so high, as well as the sticker price.
Nuclear is not available now in the sense that you can order a plant and have it running in a year or two like you can with solar. More like a decade
Coal is available, but more expensive than natural gas. Coal is dead, did you really not know that?
>Utility-scale battery farms of the magnitude necessary are not.
But rapid progress is being made, and the utilities are planning for the future, which is only rational.
The interesting aspect is that by the time a nuclear power plant is online renewable energy and battery storage might have advanced enough to make it uneconomical.
How is it we're more concerned with wasting some money than the possibility of catastrophic climate change? This is why the federal government should be more involved with combating climate change - nobody is willing to risk their money, or their power bill going up, even if it means essentially saving the world and/or our way of life.
In general, solar has been great for reducing peak demand, since it has highest output during the middle of the day when electricity demand is also greatest. Not clear how much farther it can go, though. Wind may be able to replace some, but wind isn't strong everywhere.