Ethanol goes into a boring tank, but to be useful that boring tank has to be pumped into a tanker and driven, using more fuel, to somewhere it can be distributed. That's way more energy-intensive than running a cable, so forget storage, just run the cable and let the grid operator take care of the storage at utility-scale.
The cost for the storage still exists and has to be paid by someone. And extending the power grid at this scale is a several decade long undertaking. These things don't pop up by sheer willpower.
The point remains that the costs of solving storage for solar are less than the costs of solving transport for ethanol, especially when you consider how dreadfully inefficient ethanol is as a fuel source, double-especially when you consider how dreadfully inefficient combustion engines are. It's no contest.
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