Comment by PunchyHamster

It's cute you think short cycles are somehow better in gas turbines and compressors and that you will restart the whole thing constantly to fill short term demands

> In these discussions please keep in mind that frequency regulation, short term and long term shortage are different applications with different needs.

The comparison is valid; If you want to fill hour to hour demand or add some frequency regulation, an inverter with a bunch of batteries is far, far better than this

> You don’t want to used pumped hydro for short term storage because the rapid cycling will drive up the maintenance costs. You actually hear about hydro power plants talking about installing batteries to reduce wear.

They are still cycled daily, that's the entire point of them that even worked pre renewables - load up on cheap night energy and unload it with demand. Renewables just flipped that to load in solar peak.

And putting few hours worth of batteries to reduce cycling is beneficial in both of those cases.