> am I missing some economic factor?

That's the big mystery. We're told wind+solar are super cheap. Cheaper than everything. Cheap, cheap, cheap. You'd think, renewables being so cheap, it would rapidly displace all the expensive stuff.

But it does not. All sources of energy grow simultaneously, despite the plentiful anecdotes about limited regional shifts in specific markets.

So that creates doubt about the "cheap" claims. Such doubts, however, aren't generally welcome, and it's best to keep these thoughts to yourself, should they emerge. Carefully asking questions, as you've done, is the least damaging approach to coping with this apparent contradiction. I don't recommend ascribing it to nefarious conspiracies: that creates poor mental habits that don't end well.

In the meantime, there are concepts such as LCOE+ that deal with the real economics of energy supply and demand that can inform you on the matter. You'll want to be careful here, however. You'll encounter ideas that don't align well with preferred narratives and, if you're not careful with such knowledge, you might inadvertently peg yourself as being aligned with counter-narrative forces. And that's never good for kudos.

> All sources of energy grow simultaneously, despite the plentiful anecdotes about limited regional shifts in specific markets.

Do you have a source for that? What I can find points to the opposite:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67005

And globally:

https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/breakdown-of-...