I did not read the entire article
That said
I have property in Arizona and the closest grid power is 7 1/2 miles away from my place.
I assembled my own Solar System this past summer.
Yes it was costly
I have (8) 200 amp hr Lithium batteries in my system
2400 watts of solar panels at the present time but can go up to 6600 watts with out adding any more Charge Controllers to the system.
My System puts out 30 amps of 1ph 220v and (2) stings of 30 amp 120v. I can add another Inverter to make it 60 amps.

I have been running gas driven Generators when I have worked up on my property getting set up to retire up there.
I go threw between 15 and 25 gallons of gas in a 2 to 3 week period of time in the past.

This last time I went up about a month ago. I used 5 gallons of gas the first day because I needed to work some bugs out of my Solar System.
After I got the system working. I was operating a 2hp table saw , 2hp Miter saw. an 2 1/2 hp Air Compressor along with my skill saw at the same time I was running a Refrigerator , Lights and during the day an Air Conditioner or ceiling fan.
In Quiet at night I did not have to run the Generator to power stuff. The Batteries were a lot more than I needed and I could make Coffee in the morning with out going out and firing up the Generator.

It was sure nice to have my own Quiet power and not have to pay for gas.
I took my girl up about 2 years ago and we had to go 1 1/2 hours to town to purchase more gas because she was cooking in the 110 deg. afternoons. I think that trip cost us about 35 gallons of gas.

The grid being 7 1/2 miles away from my property and with technology the way it is.
I do not think that I will ever have the grid make it to my property in my life time.
I will not be the one paying for it any ways.

I agree that Battery back ups for an entire City is a Moron move.
This is not about securing a stable grid it is about Control.
The Battery Back ups make sense on an individual case depending on what the situation is.

My neighbor had a Solar System installed on his home here in Commyfornia.
He does not even know what he had installed.
We had a Black out for most of a day and most of an entire night.

He had nothing because his system feeds the grid at night. (No Storage)

I ran our Refrigerator , TV and A/C off of my Solar System until the Batteries were getting low.
Then I switched everything over to 1 of my Generators and saved the Batteries in my system for when we went to bed to run our Refrigerator all night .

It is nice to have your own Quiet back up system some times.
I made my system potable until We move to Arizona Permanently.

I am running a wire feed welder and Grinder off of the system right now saving on my grid electric bill since I have the prepaid power available to me.