Wind and solar are quite unreliable. That's the dirty secret. Wind/Solar might be price competitive at some $/MWh but you need build MUCH more capacity to make

Wind and solar are quite unreliable. That's the dirty secret. Wind/Solar might be price competitive at some $/MWh but you need build MUCH more capacity to make up for how unreliable they are. Each utility needs to purchase generation capacity in advance and it has to be enough to cover estimated peak usage. This is a regulatory requirement. I find it interesting that if the utility chooses to reserve wind generation, they can only apply 7% of the nameplate capacity (!) According to that math, if we're going to replace current coal/nuke/nat gas base load with wind and expect some amount of reliability, we will need to build 14x as much capacity. That is just madness. Interestingly, regulated utilities actually LOVE this because they make money for their shareholders by having some capital expenditure base amount. The Public Utilities Commission then allows them to earn some return on that base. I believe the allowed return is usually something like 8-10%. The more they spend on capacity and the less reliable the source is, the more money they make. Pretty perverse incentives, but you're a luddite science denier if you at all question this scheme. SO, if you have to waaaaay over build capacity because your sources are unreliable, the utility has to invest more to build that out. Their return on investment in generation then comes from YOU via much higher rates.