Warren Buffet should be ashamed of Berkshire Hathaway's role in strongarming the PUC in Nevada in NV Energy's favor.
It's a weird state only insomuch that it isn't like everywhere else and is still fairly successful as a territory.
The specific solution Texas has used is to create something called "Competitive Renewable Energy Zones" (CREZs), where the state identifies promising areas and invests heavily in infrastructure to try to jumpstart production, with a plan of recovering the infrastructure spending from tax on that production (once it materializes). About $7 billion in tax money has been spent on that project so far, so the central-planning part of the story isn't exactly small change. Not sure where to link for a good overview, but this article has some information: http://www.texastribune.org/2013/10/14/7-billion-crez-projec...
One thing that's not discussed too frequently about renewables is that the operating costs are less variable than fossil fuel based systems. You have a pretty good idea what the costs are going to be over the lifetime of an installation and this helps with planning and deployment. Fossil fuel prices are variable enough over 20 years that you can't plan more than a few months out, or you need to have enough cash reserves in place to weather out price spikes.