New England had a male literacy rate of around 70% compared to Britain's 60% in 1800. But New England was one of the most literate regions in America around the time of the founding, including the other American regions into the literacy rate would bring the literacy rate down (even more so when if one includes the enslaved population). Comparing the literacy rate one specific region of one country, to the national average of another country is comparing apples to oranges.
But the important thing is, the 1900 Britain's male literacy rate was 97%. Illiteracy went from something that was fairly common to exceptionally rare.
Dire poverty by modern standards, sure. But the 19th century saw a spectacular rise in living standards even for average Britons. The literacy rate in Britain was ~60% for men and 40% for women in 1800, by the end of the century it was near universal for both genders. Life expectancy at birth rose from ~40 to 50. Median wages rose, too, climbing ~50% from 1800 to 1850 (https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Real-wages-during-the-pe...).
It is simultaneously true that the average Briton (arguably wealthy Britons, too) in 1900 lived in abject poverty compared to 2025, and the 19th century saw one of the fastest rises in living standards in Britain even among average Britons.
14 hours of battery (~40 TWh for China) with the hydrogen storage or without? Because the calculator was reporting ~78,000 GWh battery storage with China's weather selected, and 2030 technology assumptions. I changed the spatial capacity factor from 1 to 2 and the battery storage requirement dropped down to 68 TWh, but still well above 40 TWH.
Regardless, 14 hours of China's electricity demand is a whopping 40,600 GWh. By comparison, 2024's lithium ion battery production figure was 1.5 TWh [1]. Even assuming 100% of this went to EV's we're still talking about roughly 25 years worth of global battery production to fulfill only China's demand for storage in this model. As you point out, we still have loads of battery demand for EV adoption, so nowhere near 100% of production will be able to be diverted to grid storage.
The scale of storage required to make intermittent sources viable without being backed by a dispatchable energy source really is tremendous, and this often gets overlooked in pushes for a fully renewable grid.
And what was the storage requirement? I just ran those parameters myself with China's 2.9 TW of constant electricity demand, and the storage requirement was over 70,000 GWh of battery storage.
By comparison, global battery production is around 1,000 GWh per year.
For us, it looks like most services are still working (eastus and eastus2). Our AKS cluster is still running and taking requests. Failures seem limited to management portal.
But the important thing is, the 1900 Britain's male literacy rate was 97%. Illiteracy went from something that was fairly common to exceptionally rare.