Renewables’ benefits overstated

Your Monday editorial, “Powering up renewables” grossly misrepresents the benefits of distributed renewable energy generation, or DG. It outlines a “triple punch” of DG benefits: lessening demand on existing transmission lines, reducing the need to build new lines and enhancing efficiency.

First, as long as DG in Arizona is dominated by solar photovoltaics, it will not reduce the need for infrastructure because intermittent energy sources, such as solar and wind, require backup base load generation and transmission to maintain reliability.

azcentral