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I back of enveloped how much solar you'd need to replace water in the California Aqueduct with desalinated. Takes about 4000 kwh an acre foot. Aqueduct deliver
by Gibbon1 4y ago
I back of enveloped how much solar you'd need to replace water in the California Aqueduct with desalinated.
Takes about 4000 kwh an acre foot. Aqueduct delivers around 3 million acre feet a year. About 1.2 X 10^13 Watt-hours.
If you assume 5.5 hours of sunlight a day, 365 days a year. You get
~6 GW of solar. That's a doable number.
- ncmncm 4y agoI wonder how that compares to using a big dehumidifier on humid air. 3M acre-ft = 3.7e12 L. At 2L/kWh, that would seem to take >200 GW 24/7. Kind of makes sense... Who would bother with desalination if a dehumidifier would suffice? Is 4000 L/kWh for desalination right? Online I find 285 L/kWh for RO, yielding... 6 GW!
- Gibbon1 4y agoAn acre-foot is 1.233X10^6 liters. So 1.233X10^6 liters/acre-foot divided by 285 L/kWh is 4326 kWh/acre-foot. Checks out.
- ncmncm 4y agoWhile building out the 6 GW, every increment on the way would be incrementally more useful. Start with a 100 MW array and desalinate with that, and just keep adding to it until you are desalinating "enough". I think California announced that shading existing canals with solar, besides cutting millions of gallons of evaporation, would generate 12 GW. But investors really, really want to put all the panels out in deserts.