[Bruce Kurtz]

This is what makes liberals dangerous. You take out 1/3 of the power plants (all coal) and replace them with wind and solar sources. Coal/gas/nuke power plants have surge capability, need more power during a hot spell, you add more coal or gas. Wind produces no power when there is no wind, solar no power at night. These people are bat shit crazy!

[july4thfreedomfoundation]

Also, those stupid windmills kill millions of birds, including bald eagles.

[Ozark Tom]

The coal and nuclear plants are the back-stop to the electric grids. They run near maximum capacity as the base electrical generation, because of engineering constraints related to thermal fatigue damage. They change output slowly to minimize this thermal stress. They do not load follow but provide base-load.

Turbine peaking plants rapidly change output--can be brought from hot-standby to full output quickly--and can be cold-started and brought online in a reasonable short time-frame.

At most, some 20-30% of electric production can be sourced from the non-dispatchable solar and wind. Above that margin there will be brown-out or black-out. Shut down the coal plants and we immediately enter the instability zone above the threshold.