> When is there zero sun?

I mean, its not my argument. But... something like the Dust Bowl of the 1930s or even a large volcanic eruption (like the 1980s Mount St. Helen eruption) would block out the sun in a local area for multiple days.

But my point being: such disasters are beyond our storage capabilities by several magnitudes. Most energy storage projects are at best, aiming for a few hours of energy storage.

Many (ie: Flywheels, typical Batteries, etc. etc.) are aiming for minutes, or even just seconds of grid-energy storage. This idea of days-long or even a week-long energy storage is just devoid from reality.

There also just aren't that many people above the Arctic circle. 90/10 rule applies here.

Extreme north or south. Barrow Alaska gets over 60 days without sun in the winter. A bit further south in more populated regions you only get a few hours of sunlight during the shortest days of the year.

Cloudy days.

A far more serious consideration for solar is the changing seasons, especially at non-tropical latitudes. I graphed the output of my solar panels (56 north, Scotland) and it's really apparent: https://flatline.org.uk/daystats.html

So those panels are basically useless for 3 or 4 months of the year, i.e. November, December, January, February.

Would there be much improvement if you could tweak the orientation to match the seasons? E.g. tilt them down toward the horizon during the winter?

It's certainly a huge complication to have motorized panels that move all the time to track the sun. But maybe it wouldn't be that much of a hassle to go out there and manually reorient them (just in 1 axis) a few times a year?

They're fixed to the roof, so making them movable would be a risk to their safety and wind resistance while being fairly difficult to access (and ladders are dangerous). For a fairly small benefit. It's not just the angle but the sunrise and sunset are a lot closer together.

Solar still provides power on Cloudy days, just less.

Storage is still a poor solution to this problem it’s much cheaper to have excess renuables.