Rivers and canals were the highways of the pre-industrial world. Even the early-industrial, as digging and locks-management equipment were mechanised.
There's still a tremendous tonnage of cargo which moves by river, though most of it is less time-sensitive than that moved by rail, truck, or air. Modern rail is roughly as efficient as inland water transport. Both are reasonably viable for electrification --- barge "mules" could be and are in places electrified locomotives operating on land with tow cables.
The impact that the Erie Canal had in opening up the central United States cannot be overstated. It followed on a tradition of canal building dating back well over 2,500 years --- see China's Grand Canal.
My hometown just invested in doing this, they're building a decentralized power grid where people can generate or consume solar energy.
I'm convinced at this point that wind and solar are actually completely ready for mainstream adoption but we're so used to saying "in a few decades" that we don't realize it's ready now.
Yes, this is because :
>the issue is how to store it
That little missing part part is massively expensive and completely unaddressed by the underlying technology. It's like saying riding using a sailboat is the most gasoline-efficient way to get from place to place, except the issue of how you get over land.
If you add together the cost of solar generation (the cheap and easy part) with storage (the expensive and hard part) you get the actual cost of the generation method, which is substantially higher.