Len, simply because CCS/CCUS is impractical doesn't mean storing grid electricity is any less so. Storing electricity capable of powering a grid will never be practical, for several reasons:

1) Storage wastes valuable electrical energy. Even  lithium-ion batteries waste 15% of all electricity stored in them from internal resistance and bi-directional inversion losses. That means when gas- or coal-fired electricity is stored, its emissions are increased by >15%. 
2) How much storage is enough to prevent the grid from going down? Until letting the grid go down is an acceptable option, there can never be enough storage.
3) Batteries are fine for flashlights. To power California's grid for one day without sunshine would require over $1 trillion in Li-ion batteries, or about four times the entire state budget. They would need to be replaced every 10-12 years.
4) Storage is not a source of energy. Because stored electricity must be generated by other means, to achieve 100% carbon-free electricity would require at least twice as much renewable generation - half to power the grid, the other half to charge storage.
5) Binding grid constraints make it impossible to re-route electricity indiscriminately to where it's needed. Electricity presently generated at central generating plants leaves the plant on a few high-powered transmission pathways, which are progressively split to best serve consumers. Why? Whether distributing electricity, water, or packages, networks of radial topology are the most efficient and cost-effective way to distribute an identical product to the greatest number of people.
To understand why this makes it impossible to plop storage down at any node of the network and direct it somewhere else, I suggest you plug a 2400W electric oven into a 15 amp wall plug, then turn it up to Broil. Or, ask an electrical engineer.

No technology becomes a choice until its feasibility has been demonstrated. The same innocent storage dreams you list above have been circulating since the 1970s, and are no more feasible now than they were then.

Whats not reliable?

Why are you so negative? We can increase the coal power plants energy efficiency to that of natural gas. Actually we can increase the energy efficiency of both the coal and natural gas power plants by recovering the heat energy from the exhaust, and utilizing it, and creating more full time jobs.

We can have coal power plants operating and putting into the atmosphere less CO2 than a natural gas fired power plant, if CO2 emissions are a concern to you.

How much mining and CO2 is being created to build the components for wind turbines and solar arrays? And they have to be replaced every 20 years. And before that already they are not producing the electricity they were when newly installed. What will it cost to replace all this renewable energy every 20 years, and how will they dispose of or recycle all these components. Have you ever been on YouTube and looked up wind turbines? Solar can't make electricity at night and makes much less when dusty or covered in snow and wind can't make electricity when the wind is not blowing or it is hot outside.

Have you ever read The New Energy Economy, an exercise in magical thinking by Mark P Mills from MIT? He did a lot of research into renewable energy. The good and the not so good. Check it out.