Inaccurate Data Leads to Uninformed Decision Making

Summary:

Local solar power connected to the local distribution grid remains cheaper than building solar or wind in the desert hundreds of miles from San Diego. A new study for the County of San Diego claiming the opposite, reached its conclusion by assuming local solar would cost twice as much as data presented by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and by assuming solar built in the desert would not require new dedicated transmission lines. Both assumptions are incorrect.

Article:

The Voice of San Diego’s MacKenzie Elmer covered the story and quoted PCF Board member Bill Powers regarding the studies’ failure to use accurate renewable energy pricing in the study’s calculations:

“Powers disputes the UCSD study, arguing that it overestimated the cost of rooftop solar while lowballing the cost of transmission upgrades needed to move renewable energy from Imperial County to San Diego.

‘The presumption here is that the cheapest, biggest bang for the buck is what we will do,’ Powers said. ‘That is not true. That is not what we did the last time. Last time we built the big transmission line that cost us billions of dollars.’”