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> Golf courses, anyway, have no legitimate reason to continue being allowed unlimited irrigation. Because you find them distasteful? It was the duty of Califo

> Golf courses, anyway, have no legitimate reason to continue being allowed unlimited irrigation. Because you find them distasteful? It was the duty of California's political class to continue to provide water for its people and industries, and they decided also for reasons of taste to stop doing that in the 1960s. When Ronald Reagan was governor for eight years, very much a sea change from Jerry Brown's father Pat Brown who was governor from 1959-67 and previous governors and legislators (Jerry "Governor Moonbeam" at the time replaced Reagan). > Dual-use agriculture + solar PV farms should get priority for water. PV can seriously cut evaporation and water loss while also providing power for (eventually) desalination or (immediately) to displace fossil fuel use. This whole topic is about how desalination is not being allowed to alleviate one part of California's water shortages and we can assume in other locations (who else is going to even try after this debacle?). Solar provides neither baseline or peaking power, so if you want real power from it you've got to add $$$ storage systems. Also not sure how you can capture the sun's light for PVs and provide it to growing plants at the same time; what I was able to dig up searching just now is "use on marginal land" and other half measures. California is demonstrably not interested in reducing fossil fuel use when it's forced or is forcing all its nuclear plants to shut down. One article I read not long ago credibly claimed a lack of serious power after the last plant shuts down soon may make it generally impossible to lift water to get to the LA region I think it was. If you chose to deny any of these points, doing the math first will make your case more convincing, if you ignore science and engineering realities, as discussed elsewhere in this subthread you'll hit the brick was of the laws of nature.

ncmncm 4y ago
Storage is cheap and getting cheaper. Storage cost is plummeting faster than solar or wind ever did. But until we have enough renewable overcapacity to meet demand and also charge up storage, any storage built out would sit empty. You get far more generating capacity for the dollar from renewables than any other means, so that is the obvious place to put money just now. When the time for it does come, the storage will be radically cheaper. Just now, the utility-scale iron-air battery factories are under construction, to be ready for that time. There are dozens of other energy storage options. All of them work, so the only uncertainty is which will end up cheapest, or most useful. Synthetic ammonia and hydrogen have the advantage that they are exportable, so 100% of your overcapacity after filling local tankage generates revenue, an advantage over other modes. California has dozens (hundreds?) of existing high-altitude reservoirs that could be used cheaply for pumped hydro with minor retrofits. California is very aggressively adding renewable generation capacity to displace fossil fuel, so the accusation of "not interested" falls flat. Nukes are not being "forced" down: Diablo Canyon, e.g., will cost $2B to refurbish, but that $2B would pay for more renewable power than Diablo Canyon could produce, and then Diablo Canyon would continue sucking down money to operate that solar would not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect

ncmncm 4y ago

Storage is cheap and getting cheaper. Storage cost is plummeting faster than solar or wind ever did. But until we have enough renewable overcapacity to meet demand and also charge up storage, any storage built out would sit empty. You get far more generating capacity for the dollar from renewables than any other means, so that is the obvious place to put money just now. When the time for it does come, the storage will be radically cheaper. Just now, the utility-scale iron-air battery factories are under construction, to be ready for that time. There are dozens of other energy storage options. All of them work, so the only uncertainty is which will end up cheapest, or most useful. Synthetic ammonia and hydrogen have the advantage that they are exportable, so 100% of your overcapacity after filling local tankage generates revenue, an advantage over other modes. California has dozens (hundreds?) of existing high-altitude reservoirs that could be used cheaply for pumped hydro with minor retrofits. California is very aggressively adding renewable generation capacity to displace fossil fuel, so the accusation of "not interested" falls flat. Nukes are not being "forced" down: Diablo Canyon, e.g., will cost $2B to refurbish, but that $2B would pay for more renewable power than Diablo Canyon could produce, and then Diablo Canyon would continue sucking down money to operate that solar would not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect