(Extremely) long distance transmission lines are theoretically useful because nighttime for you is daytime 12 timezones away; and even in the same time zone, winter for you is summer on the other side of the equator.
I don’t know what the cost of the stuff is, nor the geopolitics, but the losses are low enough (3.5%/1000km [0]) to at least be worth asking that sort of question — if the answer is “that’s fine”, you only need to store energy for non-static use, like phones and cars.
Batteries may or may not be a viable solution. On the “it’s fine” side, if you can electrify every car, then you are close to the production level needed to get enough batteries even for a no-intercontinental-transmission-winter scenario (83 kWh is a large Model 3, that per American household is fine for summer but marginal for winter). On the “perhaps not” side, there is no guarantee that the impressive current growth of batteries will last long enough to get us there.
Synthetic gas and smarter energy consumption: I know far too little to comment.
I don’t know what the cost of the stuff is, nor the geopolitics, but the losses are low enough (3.5%/1000km [0]) to at least be worth asking that sort of question — if the answer is “that’s fine”, you only need to store energy for non-static use, like phones and cars.
Batteries may or may not be a viable solution. On the “it’s fine” side, if you can electrify every car, then you are close to the production level needed to get enough batteries even for a no-intercontinental-transmission-winter scenario (83 kWh is a large Model 3, that per American household is fine for summer but marginal for winter). On the “perhaps not” side, there is no guarantee that the impressive current growth of batteries will last long enough to get us there.
Synthetic gas and smarter energy consumption: I know far too little to comment.
[0] https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J... page 11