I don't have a good answer today, but IMO it is coming.

The advent of the sodium ion 150 wh/kg (CATL in mass production this year) should drop the price and increase availability without the Lithium supply issue. Also, LFP / LMFP will hit 200+ wh/kg this year in production (CATL as well, and others) ... needs lithium, but don't require cobalt or nickel as I understand it.

The first world smug answer is that the second and third world will tolerate less reliability. They apparently already do, but they gain more control with the panels.

Gravity based storage (flywheels or heck, pulleys) may be good enough for non-first-world expectations as well. Generally it won't work for first world expectations. Flywheels would probably be sufficient.

The market should be huge though, in the billions of people. Again, a smug first world answer is that the "decarbonization" problem needs to be prioritized, so as much solar/wind/storage needs to be focused on the first world grids to get consumer transportation and power generation on BEVs and solar/wind as quickly as possible.

But again I like to think that solar (home panels on roof) + wind (in the sense of a village megawatt turbine in a rural village) + personal BEVs (electric scooter, e-bike) + starlink terminal should be so empowering to a rural second/third world community.

Heck, think about Australia, a "first world country" but basically a bunch of cities and very very rural surroundings. It has all the infrastructure / distance / spreadout issues that America has but on steroids.

Now, I don't live there and don't know the terrain beyond the fact that it is grassland / desert in the middle of the country, and a lot of it. You know what that's perfect for? Solar and Wind. Australia could likely start to economically develop more of its interior without huge infrastructure projects like transmission lines and huge amounts of cell towers and the like: starlink for communications relays, some local 5g towers for distributing the bandwidth to villages, solar for homes, a village wind turbine for more "local grid" power, and that leaves: storage and uh... water.

And roads.

I really do view this as a very empowering opportunity for tribal and indigenous populations which almost always exist in minority political positions in central governments. What is the primary means of denial of opportunity and resources to these political minorities? Infrastructure.

The fact that power and communications can be so effectively decentralized and locally controlled for wind / solar / battery / starlink is a fundamental game changer to these people. Look at our native american populations: the poverty in these communities (if they don't have the casino deal) is striking, and they are far away from centralized infrastructure.

I'm not saying having your own wind/solar/starlink comms will solve all the problems, but it is empowering to a community and individual people that may live there.

The tragedy of the strong Republican character of rural America is that the same thing effectively goes for almost all rural communities: cheaper and better power, cheaper and better communications, improve the appeal of moving urban and suburban workers to more remote rurals and improve their economic quandry of aging populations and population loss. At the same time, increase housing availability and affordability to more people by making the rural areas more accessible.

Wow, that was meandering, but anyway, I think the focus on alternative energy is getting too far towards grid centric just because it is a bit cheaper on cost/kwhr. There should be strong focus on home / community solar/wind/battery storage and development.

And home storage is a key aspect to it. IMO, it is largely solved technologically for the 1-2 days of storage with sodium ion batteries, you just need the scaling. Maybe you have a gas generator for really long periods, which isn't ideal for carbonization, but this is kind of like the hybrid car situation: use smaller batteries to maximize the available total battery supply across as many cars as possible to maximize the daily miles that are all-electric, but still have an ICE for long trips. That way you get 90% electrified miles, 10% for the extreme.

We missed the boat on that in cars. That should have been policy enacted 15-20 years ago to get the ball rolling (five years after the prius and insight), now all the car companies are jumping to pure-BEV (because otherwise the CEO gets fired... see: VW, BMW, etc).

We can still do the same with home storage: handle 70-90% of the load levelling with a 1-2 day battery, and the other 10-30% you use grid power or if that's not available, a gasoline or natural gas or diesel generator or fuel cell or whatever.