I heard of an interesting green battery.

So you get an elevated water tank.

Excess energy is used to pump water into the tank.

This stores the energy as gravity force.

When you need more electricity than the panels are providing, water is allowed to run down into a ground level tank that rotates turbines on its way down.

A battery that won't ever go bad or lose its capacity.

Turbines and pump will likely need maintenance at some point though. But they won't be using rare minerals or lithium.

I imagine it a bit like those old wooden water wheel mills.

Almost like we had good simple methods a long time ago. They just need a little updating.