For load balancing, these days, there’s really no need for giant monolithic storage projects. Every renewables project can — and should be made to — have storage built in to it. Companies leave it out as it would make there price per MWh higher, and, for some reason, governments let them bid without it.
(Add storage to offshore wind and it suddenly looks similar in cost to nuclear.)
So, no one’s suggesting replacing pump storage with giant battery banks, just spreading batteries and other storage across the grid.
We still have no technology capable of storing TWhs though, and that’s what we need to remove carbon from our power grid.
