I've read that Poland is having issues where the grid will only support so much, so they need to disable or dial back the renewable energy sources because it's impossible to turn down or off a coal firing plant.
So you end up with multi-year backlogs just to get grid connected with new clean energy generation.
As I understand it, a typical strategy for a power company is:
- nuclear or similar for the base load that's always required
- solar and wind as available
- weather forecasting to determine how much solar and wind will be available
- demand forecasting to determine how much power will be required at any given time
- natural gas to meet predicted solar and wind shortfalls
- RICE engines and battery storage to handle unexpected fluctuations
- contracts to buy and sell power with other nearby power companies
I think we are there. We don't need new breakthroughs we need more manufacturing capacity.
LFPs are both cheap and work great for a grid storage and now CATL is announcing new sodium batteries which are pretty ideal for grid storage (cheap and long life).
I'm guessing sweet spot would be something like "big, economically efficient battery per street of houses + solar on every house", but as it would be shared it needs investment and power company have very little incentive for it
I do find in my circles though that the loudest voices are also the ones who scoffed at my switch to an EV, but fly on vacations 3x/year, so some of it is clearly fashion & posturing.
And some of it is counterintuitive as we see Germany shut down nuclear plants for "green" reasons, only to have to spin back up some coal.