The point is that it's growing in importance and usefulness. This isn't some static point they're at. Spain has done an excellent job with integrating wind onto their grid and managing that power. In fact, their utilities and wind developers are buying up wind assets in our country.
The title says it all: briefly.
Wind & Solar are alright, but NUKES do it ALL night!
I heat my house with natural gas—reliable continuous energy, but I burn less of it when I decide to build a fire in my Franklin stove and use renewable wood energy (should we make it sound trendy and green and call it ‘biosolar’?).
Out here in the Great Plains, the wind is pretty constant, as it is in some costal areas. Sure, you need some instant-on gas turbine generators to replace it when the wind dies down, but modern wind-turbines will cut the nation’s energy bill the same way my wood stove—used only on really cold nights and when we feel like watching a fire—does for my household. (I’ve never bought wood for it: ‘forestry’ on my 1/3 acre lot which fronts a stream, and is thus partly the typical Kansas ‘gallery forest’, plus picking up firewood neighbors are discarding has given me plenty, with only ‘infrastructure costs’ of buying an ax, some wedges, a sledgehammer, and a chainsaw (and maintenance on the same).
Also, there are various technologies for storing wind energy when the electricity generated exceeds demand (one clever scheme is to compess air with the excess energy, then use it to drive the same turbine when the wind is down and electric demand is up).