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Most desalination plants around the world are operating at 100% capacity all of the time, because that's what needed to avoid depletion of the reservoirs. To b
by beagle3 8y ago
Most desalination plants around the world are operating at 100% capacity all of the time, because that's what needed to avoid depletion of the reservoirs.
To be able to "build up reserves" means that you have to build much higher capacity, but only use as much of it as clean energy allows - in today's world, this is highly uneconomical.
If anything, the reserves to be built are energy reserves that allow water to be desalinated continuously -- and that's something which makes sense in general, possibly grid scale as storage technology improves, regardless of the specifics of water desalination.
- adamcharnock 8y agoI’ve heard on the grapevine that facilities are now being designed which work at under 100% capacity in order to soak up excess/cheap power. I believe this is coming about because: 1) the high cost of power and presence of sporadically cheap power makes it economically viable, and 2) designing equipment with lower duty cycles can actually provide substantial cost savings. Ie a facility which only runs 50% of the time is much cheaper to build & run than once which runs 100% of the time. Sorry I cannot cite sources right now.
- Nasrudith 8y agoI believe the reason for that is the expense. They prefer to delay and trying to cut back drastically even when the situation is obviously unsustainable. Thus it gets run at 100% capacity when they finally build it and need three more. To take truly economically fantastic extremes for current technology if desalination was fiscally cheaper than drilling wells we would see them doing that far more.