I am starting to agree with you on the unnecessary scarcity Jo, though not necessarily with your suggested solution (To me, hydrogen backed solar is a much more established tech that does the the trick).

There are some anomalies in power metering data, which explain a lot of things. It does look like maybe indeed a ruse, but one carried out by no-one in particular, and yet everyone mostly unwittingly.

Maybe by learning about how that works, we will move onto solutions like the one you've identified, or hydrogen backed solar.