from your quote: "energy storage, to enable use of cheap baseload energy, available at night, for serving high daytime loads that would otherwise require expensive peaking power plants"
These plants generally burn natural gas but have to be ramped up to full power too quickly to burn it efficiently. In addition, they sit idle for much of the day and are almost never used at night --so they have to pass along the entire cost of building and operating the plant to the utility for the brief period each day that they are needed (read: more expensive power). Third, since these plants are burning inefficiently they are no doubt putting out more greenhouse gases such as methane (which is known to be 17 times as harmful to the climate as CO2).
So the greatest benefit of energy storage for renewables to you and me is cleaner air and possibly a smaller rate hike next year from the electric company (ok that one probably won't happen but it's nice to dream). To me, just knowing that no wind farm will have to temporarily shut down its power output because the grid doesn't need the power right at that second --you and I will receive that electricity later in the day or tomorrow as needed.
As I recall, on March 23, 2010 the wind farms in the Texas Panhandle had to be shut down --because they were putting out far too much power for the electrical lines to take, so they shut down the wind generation to protect the lines from damage! Wind power without energy storage will be shut down when things like that happen. Wind power WITH energy storage can just save that excess power for use later.
EJ Peaker Power Plants - NYC by ssbx
This map details all the peaker power plants located within a 1/2 mile radius of an environmental justice community (as defined by NYSDEC). "Peaker" is a designation given to power plants that are only intended to operate on high electrical demand days when the generating capacity of base load plants is strained, like on hot summer days. Peaker plants often emit more pollution per unit of energy produced than base load plants. All of the peaking units shown in this map operate without post-combustion pollution controls.
http://habitatmap.org/profiles/41...Note: you can select EJ Peaker Power Plants on that page and click View Map to see the ones that are constructed in environmentally sensitive areas.