I know of a (smallish) power station in North Wales where they have two reservoirs and overnight they pump the water into the top reservoir at 'cheap rate' and then run the water back down through the turbines for daily consumption at 'expensive rate'. There may be more around the country for all I know. Simple opportunity cost though not an ideal model for obvious reasons.
On electric cars, given the existing technology, it seems to me the fad is to try and remove polution from higher population densities and distribute it elsewhere. Logic of sorts, but flawed nevertheless.
https://www.electricmountain.co.uk/'electric mountain' in LLanberis is worth a visit, a good tour. The pumped storage schemes may seem inefficient but are more economically viable than building enough power stations to handle transient peak load and keeping them running all day. Of course now we are getting instant on-demand access to unlimited power via solar and wind we will be able to phase such relics of a bygone era out..
