If you look at it from a systems perspective, battery storage is the same as increasing/decreasing steam output or drawing from a steam bank to match demand and the diurnal nature of solar is the same as taking units offline for maintenance.
The durations, scale, and reaction times to changing conditions are different (sometimes worse, sometimes better) but the concept is the same.
We solved those problems before, and have already solved them with solar it's just a matter of building out the infrastructure.
We may have to shed a single digit percentage of "market efficiency" in the short term to ensure the future of humanity, though, so there is resistance.
You are correct. we have indeed solved some of these issues, we have even built incredible solutions such as Electric Mountain in Wales[0] to store and release incredible amounts of energy almost immediately. However this just serves to prove my point. Even an entire lake being flushed down a mountain is not enough to offset all the peaaks in just the UK, a relatively small country. To solve this issue on a global scale enough to provide the worlds power from solar is an unthinkable challenge IMO.
We've effectively done that with streaming on-demand programming and local storage allowing pausing of OTA programming.
Also, Octopus Energy is now the UKs largest provider, they have tariffs with variable rates (demand-based pricing). Very occasionally you can be paid to use electricity. That's certainly encourages some users away from boiling the kettle at peak times.
The durations, scale, and reaction times to changing conditions are different (sometimes worse, sometimes better) but the concept is the same.
We solved those problems before, and have already solved them with solar it's just a matter of building out the infrastructure.
We may have to shed a single digit percentage of "market efficiency" in the short term to ensure the future of humanity, though, so there is resistance.