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There's no need to store a year's worth of electrical production. In most cases, a few hours is more than sufficient. Widespread shortfalls are better addressed via grid supply than storage. It might be necessary to have bridging power for a few days, possibly a few weeks, but this is still far from annual-scale in either fraction of production or duration of utilisation.

Synfuels (petroleum analogues), again, though round-trip inefficient are sufficiently energy-dense and long-term storage stable that they might serve for emergency long-term standby capacity. It's useful for other needs (industrial feedstocks and transportation fuels in aviation and marine shipping) so that some supply would likely be necessary regardless. Having standby / idle generation plant would be a capital and maintenance factor, but not impossible. There's well over a century of experience in storing strategic reserves of petroleum in both artificial and naturally-occurring storage facilities.




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