If California simply continues their current storage rollout they will have 10 hours of storage at peak demand and 20 hours of storage at average demand when the warranties for what they build today run out in 20 years.
This would coincide with any new nuclear power plant project starting today beginning commercial operations.
If Vogtle, Flamanville 3 and friends had delivered on their promises in the 2000s nuclear power might have been part of the solution. They did not do it, and thus nuclear power never became part of the solution.
https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/
> h2 production is a pipedream for foreseeable future
When we get to the final percent in the 2030s we can utilize akin to todays peaker plants financed on capacity markets [1] but zero carbon.
Peaker plants today already run too little to be economical on their own, essentially what in our current grids constitute seasonal storage and emergency reserves.
Simply update the terms for the capacity markets to require the fuel to be zero-carbon. It can be synfuels, biofuels or hydrogen. Whatever comes out the cheapest.
As we electrify transportation we can shift over the massive ethanol blending in gasoline in the US to be our seasonal buffer. [2]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_market#Capacity_ma...
I would suggest reading the study I linked so you can see the difference in methodology when credible researches in the field tackle similar question.
The credible studies are focused on simulating the energy system and market with real world constraints. Which unsurprisingly works out to be way cheaper when not involving nuclear in the picture.