[ctdonath]

My utility solar cost average 50% over regular electricity $ for 2 years.

Texas suffered a doomsday scenario last winter, power demand far exceeding renewables ability under prolonged bad weather. California has frequent rolling blackouts; bizarrely, solar roofs are disallowed to supply the homes they cover.

[derriz]

Where in the world do you live out of interest? There must be some unusual local conditions that would cause that price discrepancy because I've followed the electricity prices in a number of European countries as they've increased their reliance on wind turbines and have seen no obvious kinks in the plots of prices as wind has contributed more and more. Certainly wholesale electricity prices - where I've followed them - are at a historic low at the moment but there is a lot on the demand side that could be causing this.

The Texas story actually reinforces one of my points - thermal fossil fuel plants are unreliable also as the failure of thermal plants caused a far greater loss in capacity than that lost by renewables.

California's electricity has been a mess for decades before the recent growth in solar and wind so I'm not sure how you can claim a causal relationship between what's happening now in California and the expansion of wind and solar.

Regarding domestic roof-top solar PV - I currently don't see it having any role to play in the march towards carbon-free energy - the cost per KWh is just too high and in many countries is only made viable by large government grants and feed-in tariff guarantees which effectively allow a domestic installation to exploit the grid like a giant infinite and free battery. Utility scale solar is completely different - it costs about 1/5 of the price per KWh compared to roof-top domestic PV and in many markets is now competing and beating conventional thermal generation on price without government support.

[oscardssmith]

The main cause of Texas's blackouts were the grid losing about 70% of their natural gas power (and not having good inter-connects with the rest of the US). Also, it is a great example of where the ability to pre-heat a ton of water would have been really useful. If they had the ability to do so, it would have greatly reduced the demands on the grid when the storm hit, which would have prevented the problem in the first place.