Pumped storage has been used in California for decades.
See "Oroville Dam".
Efficiency is not great but quite acceptable. Problem is these required TWO big chunks of land. One high; one low.
Now that destroys the natural use of sacred land and is unacceptable to the enviro-left so they shoot themselves in the foot by opposing it. Yet they don't go back to unoighted, unheated caves as they would were they at all sincere.
The Oroville dam does
not just serve as a power storage basin, it`s main function is flood & water supply control, which is not what can be said about the pumped hydro electric basins in Germany that are needed to prevent a cascading power failure.
It would have been an engineering blunder not to channel the Oroville outflow through hydro turbines.
Unfortunately the geographic features that enable this degree of versatility, efficiency/use don`t exist everywhere else where the largest energy consumers are situated!
Most people underestimate how difficult & costly it is to operate a long range power transmission/distribution system.
Aside from line loss, HV lines often sag several meters and
max out at a
much lesser load with increased distance.
Relocating the industrial users is not really an option as much as the other choice is, where to locate a conventional power plant.
That`s not just a "German" problem, but it`s the same in the US if you take a look where your heavy industry is located.
Unlike California, water supply is not really a problem in other areas because you don`t need any elevation as you have to have it in order to generate power.
These (German) basins have no other function than to supply hydro turbines that can be instantaneously ramped up & down in sync with the current load over a wide enough operating envelope.
And that, no less is what it takes to operate a "renewable energy" system based on wind & solar that can supply
power on demand.
It`s a bit silly to distinguish between nationalities when it comes to engineering solutions, especially in power engineering.
Almost all of that is done by multi-national well structured incorporated entities that have no problem sourcing the best experts and technology.
The only thing that is unique about the "German" situation is how we got into that energy cul de sac.
It was not the technical need that led up to it, but the impetus was entirely political when the Soviet block collapsed and we inherited over 20 million hard core ex-communists as instant citizens with voting rights.
An entire countries population that had endured decades of brainwashing how evil our West German free enterprise system is. In no time the crowds that gathered to demonstrate against nuclear or any other key infrastructures grew huge enough to scare the shit out of everybody with ambitions to be successful in politics.
The "environment" was just a club they wielded to villainize the West in general. Which was ironic in view of the mess they had made out of their environment while they were under communist rule.
It took decades to clean it up and is still ongoing.
