I get the point you make, but...there ARE options for storage of wind and solar energy for usage when there is no wind or no sun, or to draw on when the grid usage goes up.
The problem is, those “storage” options are prohibitively expensive. Granted, if one uses the fallacious and deliberately deceptive LCOE that gets around this annoying issue of affordability (by simply excluding costs like backup, storage, and extra transmission) then...TAH DAH! The “affordability” of those solutions become moot because they have simply done a prestidigitator’s trick to hide the main issue of solar and wind “affordability” from the consciousness of the Rubses.
If you don’t see those costs, then...they just aren’t there. Nice.
So, you can’t “stockpile” sun or wind for when they aren’t there, but you CAN produce energy from them while they ARE there and “stockpile” that energy in the form of electric storage systems like large battery arrays, but...it just can’t be done on a large enough scale with bankrupting us even further.
I get the point you make, but...there ARE options for storage of wind and solar energy for usage when there is no wind or no sun, or to draw on when the grid usage goes up. The problem is, those “storage” options are prohibitively expensive.
With solar or wind and/or battery storage for the grid, govt/bureaucrats get involved. That always makes unbiased analysis go out the window. That's my #1 problem with solar and wind for the grid and the potential of some battery storage.
Decentralized solar owner here, and hater of solar for the grid. For me the Aha! moment was when I realized that it's sometimes not a mutual exclusive decision. In other words, you don't have to always think "either..or". Look for a possible "both...and" option. I have 90kWh of battery storage that I let drain at most 70% (my inverters start pulling from the grid if battery storage gets down to 30% SOC - strength of charge left). So count it as 63kWh of usable storage.
Why that amount? Because it requires TONS OF HOMEWORK for your use case scenario to find the line between the economies of scale (invest more to get more return) but not so much that you're fighting the law of diminishing returns (quit investing more and getting little to show for it). For example, in the past 365 days I spent a total of only $37 pulling power from the grid on days that the batteries were charged to 100% the prior day. It'd be cost prohibitive for me to spend more for battery storage just to remove that $37/year cost to my power bills. If I'm not happy with the $775 total per year in power bills, it'd be best to look at other ways to lower them. Or I could be happy with where it's at and the fact that so far the overall energy project has saved me over $7K. My monthly costs for energy are now a tiny power bill + loan payment I took out to buy and in some cases hire professionals to install solar and efficient HVAC and water heater and insulation and charging for EV, etc.). That saves me from high power bill + high natural gas bill + high cost of gasoline (from before I converted my two nat gas appliances to electric and bought an EV that my wife and I do most of the driving in: 18K miles per year of home charged miles).
I challenge anyone to find an honest bureaucrat/regulator who'll do that level of research and analysis for the community. Until that happens, forget solar/wind/battery for the grid.
Also, for something like what I have to work for the grid, it'd require having hydrocarbon plants sitting idle during the good times. Which basically means double investment in power generation (i.e. solar plants plus hydrocarbon plants) with the hydrocarbon plants sitting idle for a while. IMHO that's a huge waste. However, if the cost of hydrocarbon fuel goes up a lot (because of Dim restricting on mining/drilling for hydrocarbons), I can see a state in the south wanting to use some solar farms to lower hydrocarbon fuel costs. But even then that requires the hydrocarbon power plant to be able to scale up and down efficiently as needed. Can a nat gas fueled power plant run at, say 20% output and use up only 20% of nat gas as when it runs full throttle? To my knowledge that's only recently been created.