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How much do those batteries cost and can they supply power for multiple days or a season if your renewable sources aren't providing like normal?

Not to mention the environmental damage from producing and disposing of batteries.

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I agree, there are better options for mass scale long term energy storage than batteries, e.g. (green) hydrogen, methane

Pumped hydro is currently the cheapest long term energy storage by a significant amount.

not so cheap anymore when you want to add lot's of storage capacity

That's exactly when pumped hydro shines. Increasing the storage reservoir capacity is cheap. It's the turbines and infrastructure that's expensive, but that doesn't change if you're only increasing the capacity.

All the cheap storage reservoir capacity is already used - from where are you going to get more?

All the cheap storage capacity with natural flow have been taken.

Pumped hydro doesn't need natural flow, because it uses pumps. All it needs is a height differential. Here's 22,000 in Australia alone. There are millions worldwide.

https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/anu-stores-an-atlas-of-p...

so why hasn't the storage capacity not been taken?

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