I think something to factor into storage is power (energy/time) in addition to just energy. A storage system that is low power (building up it's energy slowly over a longer time) is likely best suited to a load that uses low power (depleting it's energy slowly). It's possible to go counter to this - deplete the storage quickly, re-build very slowly - but often this is where finding a practical application of non-battery storage systems runs into problems.
Someday I'd like to go back and take a look at pre-grid farming tech. At that time, the wind/battery 24V system seemed to be the winning solution. I'm not aware of what it's technological competitors were at that time.
