Actually, peak solar precedes peak demand by about 2-4 hours.
Where do you live that that is the case? Peak supply is at local noon (perhaps an issue with your timezone? That local noon is 2hours before timezone 12:00?)
Speaking of which, you know what blows your whole argument out of the water? Pumped storage, which already exists around the world for evening power production, long predating renewables.
Actually it does not blow my argument out of the water. As you meanwhile wrote more or less what I wrote. Until you have so much wind and solar that your fossile plants idle, you have no use for storage.
Pumped storage is classically for balancing energy and the so called "primary reserve". Of course it can be used to store surplus solar/wind power. But that brings us back to square one: there is no nation in the world that right now has so much surplus that there is a "storage problem".
I get what you're saying. I don't see it as 'simple', I see it as 'incorrect'. I'm not sure where the breakage in your understanding is.
Neither see I yours. Why don't you make a practical example with fake numbers and show me a single hour of a day where you had surplus from wind/solar, can not power down the fossile plants, so you NEED to store it, and give me another hour of the day and explain me why at that hour you can use the stored energy. As long as your renewables produce less than "base load" you never have such a hour often enough that storage makes sense.
The goal is to EXACTLY match supply and demand. So what you can do is that when power demand is at 60% of peak(for example), you turn down the various spinning generators. But, assuming you have 'extensive' penetration by green power, and I'm talking 'eliminate all fossil fuel usage, especially coal' here, you might not have enough generators to turn down, or it might be cheaper to keep them spinning, etc... So you store the power to use later.
Yes, and exactly that your existing pumped storages do just fine, see Germany. The only thing you might need to change is the rate at which pumped storages can store or release power.
So, for example, your systems are producing 100% power during the hours of 10am to 2 pm. Demand is only 80% of peak, so you end up storing 20MWh.
Exactly! What I say since days!
So: when does such a situation arise? Obviously it can't arise when the total non dispatch able input is only 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% or 50% or even 75% of peak! So until your wind and solar plants are not even able to reach the 80% that you put on the table above: no storage needed! I'm talking about NEEDED. Not about usefulness if other conditions are taken into account (like spinning generators _not_ down because it is cheaper to store the surplus and keep the generators up) however, let me state it again: there is no storage problem that desperately seeks a solution.
With EVs and Smart Grids the potential of storage goes even further down.
In other words, all thinkable problems regarding modern power production can and should first be tackled via SmartGrids, then comes long nothing, and then potentially come storages.
