Last week I went to the opening of the newest power plant in the West. It is a dual cycle natural gas turbine combined with steam boiler technology. It is a 600 Megawatt plant. It is now the base load plant for our area. It is taking over from four steam natural gas/oil plants that date back to the late 60’s and forward. The new plant is 50% efficient, the old plants are 32% efficient - catch is they are ONLY that efficient in a narrow operating range. Either side of that range and they become very inefficient - as if 32% was not bad enough. So they replaced 32% efficient with 50% and it is now the base load. Not a bad deal in my book.
Incidentally we in Northern Nevada have very good wind conditions, one of my neighbors has four wind turbines to run his house. They are backed up by batteries and solar with emergency tap to the gird. He has to go one the grid about twice a month during the winter and once a month in the Summer.