Before the obsession with intermittent wind and solar took hold, gas was rarely used to generate electricity if coal, nuclear or hydro sources were available. Gas-fired electricity, in the main, was simply too expensive, by comparison with coal-fired power.
Coal-fired generators are designed to run around-the-clock. Wind turbines and solar panels only run according to the dictates of the weather and, in the latter case, where the Sun sits in the sky.
The crazy and chaotic intermittency inherent in wind and solar has created a place for Open Cycle Gas Turbines and even piston-engined diesels, of the kind used in oceangoing vessels.
Both are referred to as ‘peakers’ in the electricity generation trade, because they’re designed to run for short bursts to pick up peaks in the load (ie rapid increases in demand). Their running costs are such that they were only ever meant to run at the margins…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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