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In order to cope with renewables variability various approaches complement each other but need investments in order to produce the baseload: continent-scale wind generation patterns benefiting from lo-correlation between wind regimes, a mix (wind, solar, biomass...), storage, smartgrid...

Money spared because they are more and more cheap will be invested in those ways, letting us benefit from their main characteristics (no major risk, no combustible, very low emissions, no dangerous waste, no risky and expensive decommission...).

It’s not comparing peak-to-peak. That’s what “levelized” means. It’s price per actual megawatthour produced.

At least in my state, a MWh produced at 3pm is much less useless than one produced at 8pm

Variability is smoothed with diverse overbuild and robust inteconnects (sorry, Texas).

Batteries are needed for peaker plants, like gas is used now. But they don't need to be everywhere.