[DTogo]

The wind generated electricity has priority and the wind comes up the coal plant must shut down.

Coal plants don't "shut down" in response to wind, gas-fired generation, specifically peakers, pick up the slack or ramp down generation.

[mountainlion]

Maybe in the flat land but in hill and mountain country the wind is quite unpredictable. Shut down or ram down is just semantics. A sudden load is not a ramp up or down it can be like a cliff in a gusty area. The Big Thompson water project has been working over 50 years generating power and moving water form the western slope. New power sources need to have multiple byproducts to extract the most energy. Nuclear can use waste heat to heat greenhouses and industry. Wind energy is just too unreliable for me.

[mountainlion]

Windmills have their place as history has shown. Remote water pumping on large ranches is quite effective. Remote off the grid electric generation for storage batteries can be effective also. Efficient inverters are needed to make the whole system efficient but the systems are expensive.