The whole problem with renewables is the temporal variation and lack of large scale storage.
Producing hydrogen (and potentially converting that into more traditional gasses) is a perfectly viable solution, but of course such infrastructure can only be stood up over years and decades. It's not relevant for this winter.
> They found the former has a considerably lower Capex and a payback time of only two years. [compared with Lead Acid batteries]
I wouldn't thought that a Gravity Battery would've been more efficient than compressed air: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery
Also TIL about geothermal heat pump energy storage: https://techxplore.com/news/2022-09-geothermal-ideal-energy-... :
Germany is in the process to switch over to electricity for heating, too. There are a lot of incentitives to install new heatpumps for example.
Edit: Having a mostly renewable grid with backup coal/gas/nuclear is much much easier than having an entirely renewable grid.
So, another way of looking at it is - Germany is still producing most of its electricity from non-renewable sources. Adding nuclear, it's still ~40% from coal and gas [0]. So again, what surplus?
In contrast, France is producing ~70% of its electricity just from nuclear, with another ~19% from renewables.
Note that either way, the major energy expenditure that ties all of these countries to Russian gas is not electricity, it is heating.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/romania?country=DE...