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Also not mentioned is the amount of power generated by a fossil fuel source that is required to get it spinning and to keep it spinning.
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This is all engineering, no need to fret over it.....
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Actually you leave the plants running even when the wind blows. There is not enough time to start from shut down to generation if a brown out occurs.
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Gas would be the easiest second and most portable due to less water requirements.
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Here are two dirty secrets of the IWT industry (and it’s the same for the solar industry).....

As everyone knows, there has to be backup power that can seamlessly pick up the slack when the wind is not blowing (or the sun not shining). The backup power supply of choice for the backup could be anything with the proviso that that the backup has to react quickly. For this reason, the primary choice of backup is natural gas fired generators.... essentially, what is needed are gas powered generators that can go from zero to 100 mph in say 20 minutes. Gas generators can be designed with open loop gas turbines or combined cycle.... the beauty of open loop is that it can meet that ‘zero to 100 mph in 20 minutes’ requirement whereas a combined cycle design might take 2 hours.... and that is too long. On this basis, open loop becomes the more practical choice. Here’s the problem (and it’s a biggie).... open loop is in the 40% efficiency range while combined cycle is in the 60% efficiency range. Bottom line is that in order to accommodate the supply of wind and solar power, inefficient gas generation must be used.

Here’s the obvious question..... If only combined cycle gas turbines were used, would the improvement in efficiency over open loop in conjunction with all the standby energy requirements not totally negate any power that IWTs provide? I have not examined that question in detail but have on a cursory level and I think the answer is easily “yes”.... in other words from a big picture perspective, wind and solar aren’t just figuratively useless they are literally useless.

Here’s a second dirty secret. One other serious negative issue with wind and solar is this..... due to the much increased cyclical operation that the gas plants are going through as they try to pick up the slack when wind and solar are cycling (which of course is constantly occurring), these plants require much more maintenance (and will have much lower life) as a result of thermal and mechanical fatigue of the components. There is going to be a future heavy and ongoing cost for dealing with gas plant maintenance....

The issue with wind and solar is that it assumes that electricity as a resource can be driven by ‘supply’ instead of ‘demand’.... and that only really works if there is electrical storage. Most of us don’t want to be watching tv or doing our laundry and accept the fact that we have to curtail activities because the wind stopped blowing or it went cloudy. Storage on a mass scale actually does exist.... Denmark makes all kind of wind power and when the wind is really blowing, they generate it to an excess. At that point, the link to Sweden kicks in and Sweden is more than happy to take it off their hands. What do they do with it? They use hydroelectric pumps to move water up to an elevated lake and then they can use that water at their convenience to generate power by reversing the direction whenever they like. Denmark is often held up as this wonderful model because of all their wind.... you should ask the average clued in Dane what she/he thinks about that. Well, Sweden likes it quite a bit.....