The variability of wind/solar can also be handled without time of use pricing by the grid operator including terms in the energy purchase or interconnection agreement requiring the generating facility to maintain some degree of consistency to the output. Then it is up to the generator to figure out how to do that, perhaps with batteries.

The problem we saw in Ontario when the market was introduced in 2001 or so was that it was politically unfavorable to have the extremely high prices, even for an hour let alone long term, that would encourage an investor to build a storage facility.