re: If Texas's central grid only relied on solar & wind energy, would anyone have electricity?

Bingo! Wind went from big supplier (because of windy weather) to tiny supplier! It is unreliable! That is just a fact.

So, we perversely incentivized wind and solar, while we disadvantaged nuclear, oil and gas. When the chips are down, we had to go get the gas (some of which was off line because the solar and wind sources were “preferred” and some was offline due to COVID demand implications). It took a little while, but gas rallied.

We had really cold weather in Texas 30, 40, 50 years ago, and didn’t have this kind of debacle. You cannot make wind reliable - it won’t make power when the wind doesn’t blow AND it won’t make power when the wind blows too hard. Also, if it freezes up apparently.