One thing I seldom see brought up is that different energy sources work best in different places. Solar works great in the Southwest. In the upper Midwest where it snows and is overcast a lot? Maybe not so much. Wind works better there, but wind may not be enough alone and requires even more storage as it usually peaks out of phase with peak demand.
There is also geothermal energy (Alaska, West Coast, Rockies; I assume we are talking solely the USA here) and hydroelectric power (Alaska, West Coast, South East, and more).
But we often don’t talk about the energy wasted in bad location of industries. E.g. growing water demanding crops in the Mid-West or South East instead of California where water is scarce, or energy intensive industries in Alaska (where energy is plentiful) instead of Texas where it is scarce.
Another thing not mentioned is wasted energy because of lacking infrastructure. This also applies to the rest of the world. A good example is not building high speed rail connection between high travel areas, so people use polluting air travel instead, another is lack of waste management facilities so garbage is left to rot instead of reused or recycled lowering demand for making the same thing again in a far away facility.
You can transmit power over long distances with surprisingly little energy loss with high-voltage DC. Any sane national plan for renewable energy would include a large amount of long-distance power transfer, if for no other reason than to minimize the variance in power production.
When I look at it I notice that current variation in cost per mwh is much larger than transmission line losses or storage losses.
You look on a map and you notice places where the days of sun shine aren't very conductive to solar are usually within 1500 miles of places where solar works great. Seattle to the Mojave desert is 1200 miles for instance.
