Thanks for the comment, I think it massively depends on the specific panels and their makeup. You also add a lot of excellent context to the stories I found. There is a ton of cutting edge research going into solar panels and there are many different ways to achieve higher efficiency and/or longer lifespans.
My comment wasn't intended to say solar/wind is killing Coal because it isn't. Natural Gas is what is killing coal. I'm from Kentucky originally and the economy is feeling the squeeze from coal just not being really economically viable for some use cases compared to natgas. As the tech improves and mass production makes it cheaper, solar / wind will continue to make more economic sense. The currently "top of the line" most efficient solar panels as of 2019 come from SunPower and only are a paltry 22.2% efficient so there is a lot of room for improvement. Regarding renewables being a fraction of their "nameplate" capacity it really just depends on too many factors to generalize.