I live in a great plains state and haven’t been to West TX since graduating from UPT at Webb AFB back in the sixties.
...and the issue isn’t the percentage of time wind blows. The mere fact it doesn’t blow all the time is reason enough to question why anyone would consider wind or solar to be the answer to reliable energy production. The sun doesn’t shine at least eight hours a day, not counting overcast days, and wind is unreliable not to mention the wind generator itself being but thirty percent efficient.
All this means the coal fired plants remain on line regardless of available wind or solar. No savings whatsoever. Gas fire generating sources are up to ten times the cost of coal fired plants and natural gas itself is an historically price volatile fuel compared to coal.
In closing, our energy production industry has not been stupid when they put their efforts into coal fire plants. They are by far the least expensive way to produce clean safe reliable power, to meet the twenty four seven demand. EPA and presidential efforts to kill the industry not withstanding.
Was disagreeing with your per-centages but otherwise go along with your opinion. I feel though that if the wind blows and the sun shines if doesn’t hurt to use them but they are only supplemental to really dependable sources like coal and gas.
I reckon that the big advantage of gas over coal in producing power is that they can turn on and off much faster than getting the coal fired boilers up and running. Coal is a brilliant fuel when it comes to storage however. Dump the stuff in a pile at the generating station and it just sits there patiently waiting to go to work.
I think that the EPA———Enemy of the People of America agency is infested and run by closet Marxists who want to destroy America.
—————————————————Webb closed in 1977. Not many of the buildings are left. They have a small museum with 5 or 6 a/c in a hangar.