One guy simulated Australia's electrical grid for 3 years to show that the entire grid could run off of >98% renewable energy using the installed renewables with just a small amount of storage (e.g. 5 hours of average demand, ~10% of demand over the entire period).

To me this indicates that in many energy markets where renewables are sufficiently built out, the only factor for why we aren't using them more is the storage capacity and grid infrastructure to handle their variability -- and instead just running stable but dirty energy systems.

There are a lot of cool mechanical grid systems like gravity batteries (e.g. weights on a pulley system) [2] or compressed or liquid air storage systems [3] which provide cheaper storage at higher capacities and durations than electric batteries

1. https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewable-gr... 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trA5s2iGj2A 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjERw-Ol-_s