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> They could probably meet most of their energy demand with solar power without significant amount of storage. Not really, I was living in Dubai last year, and

> They could probably meet most of their energy demand with solar power without significant amount of storage. Not really, I was living in Dubai last year, and during the summer it was around 48C/120F in the day but it's still 35C/95F+ at night. As you can imagine literally everywhere inside is air conditioned, even some bus stops are! Due to the lower latitude the days are also quite short (at least compared to Europe), so solar less effective without some sort of backup or storage. The desalination plants are usually combined with power plants. The main source of fuel for power generation is natural gas, which is a by-product of oil drilling and often just burned off as it's harder to transport or store. Clean water is needed to run the turbines, so sea water is desalinated and then afterwards used for the water supply. It leads to an overall efficiency of ~86%, but if you assume the gas would have just be burnt off it's effectively free energy.

rbanffy 10y ago
Some cooling systems make ice when energy prices are lower to use as a heat sink when energy prices are higher. The same principle can be applied here - during day the energy is used to cool and to make enough ice for cooling to last through the night.
dx034 10y ago
Ok, agree with the AC, but you could use an ice storage solution as proposed in the other comment (at least for commercial buildings). For desalination, you could still use solar power for desalination plants and sell the natural gas instead of burning it? At 2.5c/mwh I can imagine that it's more lucrative to switch power and sell the gas to a country like US or UK where NatGas is needed for power plants as solar power is much more expensive.
- pm90 10y ago
  It is a thoughtful suggestion but Im guessing that if it was possible to ship off that gas and make a profit, it probably would have already been done. Perhaps its not that cost effective right now. In any case, I think now is a good time for them to invest in developing these alternatives, perhaps on a smaller scale, so that when they run out of all the plentiful fossil fuels, they would then have another system that meets their needs.
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rbanffy 10y ago

Some cooling systems make ice when energy prices are lower to use as a heat sink when energy prices are higher. The same principle can be applied here - during day the energy is used to cool and to make enough ice for cooling to last through the night.

dx034 10y ago

Ok, agree with the AC, but you could use an ice storage solution as proposed in the other comment (at least for commercial buildings). For desalination, you could still use solar power for desalination plants and sell the natural gas instead of burning it? At 2.5c/mwh I can imagine that it's more lucrative to switch power and sell the gas to a country like US or UK where NatGas is needed for power plants as solar power is much more expensive.

pm90 10y ago
It is a thoughtful suggestion but Im guessing that if it was possible to ship off that gas and make a profit, it probably would have already been done. Perhaps its not that cost effective right now. In any case, I think now is a good time for them to invest in developing these alternatives, perhaps on a smaller scale, so that when they run out of all the plentiful fossil fuels, they would then have another system that meets their needs.
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