Wind is better than Solar when considering dynamic generation problems, also in terms of output per dollar Wind is gives better return in Texas than Solar. Everything said and done, there are not many places where Solar and Wind can reliably replace conventional sources of power.
They can do it anywhere with sufficient storage effort. That is a massive challenge but so is extraction of fossil fuels. The people who say it can’t be done are lacking vision.
Storage is just direct access to the energy arbitrage market. The problem isn't "How storage makes money," but rather, "how can I make money on storage." Storage requires large capital investments for what are typically small relative returns.
However, there are some markets that are ripe for roll-out and Texas actually has a surprise advantage in the energy storage market. Many of those natural gas or oil wells are suitable reservoirs for compression storage of energy once they run dry which significantly lowers the capital costs of setting up that type of energy storage. Hell, some of those wells are even deep enough that they could be used to generate geothermal power in the future.
I'm imagining what Enron would have done with this market. For those that don't know Enron actually did interesting things in the energy market for about 10 years before it went fully over to the dark side.
If you do the math on this you realize that the low value of gravitational potential energy makes it a horrible storage vehicle on a large scale for pretty much anything except pumped hydro.
Places where it's sunny and windy seem to build out both. I'm not sure why you're talking about which one is "better" when they're different and complementary.
