[PointyHairedJedi]

I have you have a misconception or two about power generation, Infinite Improbility. Battery storage on the scale you're talking about is not even remotely feasable - the closest thing we have to it are hydro-electric schemes where excess power is used to pump water up to high resevoirs, so that at peak demand you've essentially got an extra hydro plant to plug into the grid. We cannot store electricty directly, only indirectly on a very small scale using chemicals, which is why it must be generated.

As for "shunting" energy (or more accurately, shunting excess capacity), while that may be doable on a national scale, on a global scale it would be difficult to the point of impossibility. The only way that I can think of in which it could become possible would be if tomorrow somebody in a lab somewhere discovered a very cheap, easy to manufacture room-temperature superconductor (a material with zero electrical resistance, in other words), and the likelyhood of that happening is slim to none. How far you can "send" power over a grid is entirely governed by how much is lost in its' transmission - beyond a certain distance, it just becomes unfeasable. Add to that the cost of setting up a global grid system and not to mention getting everyone to agree to such a scheme in the first place, and we're pretty much talking about something that could only happen in science fiction.