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This is one of the reasons I believe 'base load' demand is more fungible than people assume. I think in California 6% of electricity demand is pumping water. I

This is one of the reasons I believe 'base load' demand is more fungible than people assume. I think in California 6% of electricity demand is pumping water. I'm almost willing to go on record and say that's the California Aqueduct and the actual number is higher. Okay I'm going to look. https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-and-energy-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-and-energy-in-califor... > The water system uses approximately 20% of the state’s electricity and 30% of its natural gas for business and home use, according to data from 2001—accounting for more than 5% of California’s greenhouse gas emissions.

samatman 2y ago
Did you miss the stat directly underneath that? > Heating and other energy-intensive water uses in homes and businesses make up almost 90% of water-related energy use, while treatment, pumping, and conveyance of water and wastewater account for the rest. That's 2% for everything which isn't heating water. Pumping is some smaller fraction of that.
- abakker 2y ago
  you are right. The thing that is interesting is that pumping loads overall take a lot of the grid's energy, it's just that most pumps are refrigeration loads, not water transport.
- avianlyric 2y ago
  Great thing about heating water, is that it stays hot after you’ve heated it. Water heating is basically the poster child for “demand-response” technologies. You can easily heat your water a few hours earlier than normal with basically no consequences to the user. But you need to get reasonable smart about modelling people water usage, as people don’t tend forget or forgive a cold shower.
  - practicemaths 2y ago
    What about tankless water heaters? You can eliminate greenhouse gas emissions for heating and be more efficient with energy usage overall.
    - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
      tankless heaters use slightly less energy, but they use it in a really annoying way. the optimal design for a heavily renewable grid is a heat pump water heater with a tank
      - blitzar 2y ago
        The optimal design for a heavily renewable grid is solar water heating a tank in home whenever the sun shines, falling back on a heat pump water heater with a tank.
        practicemaths 2y ago
        That's for maximizing energy efficiency. Tankless I think might be a tad bit more easier and cheaper to implement than this. Regardless the point is eliminating the use of natural gas in heating water is itself a benefit.
        organsnyder 2y ago
        That's only optimal if you know you'll need 100% of the heated water (or have a way to store it). While photovoltaics are going to be less efficient than direct water heating, you can direct the energy to other uses if you don't need more hot water.
        bluGill 2y ago
        Large tanks of water are about the cheapest way we know of to store energy. Batteries store more energy, but are extremely expensive.
        organsnyder 2y ago
XorNot 2y ago
There's been other responses here pointing out that municipal water delivery pumping probably isn't a large electricity consumer, but it's also worth noting that even if it was you can't voluntarily shutdown water-delivery in large distribution systems - you have to maintain pressure and flow to prevent back contamination of the system from leaks. It's why you get boil-water advisories when there's a general outage - because dirt and bacteria can get back into the pipes and it takes time to be sure they've been flushed out of the system.

samatman 2y ago

Did you miss the stat directly underneath that? > Heating and other energy-intensive water uses in homes and businesses make up almost 90% of water-related energy use, while treatment, pumping, and conveyance of water and wastewater account for the rest. That's 2% for everything which isn't heating water. Pumping is some smaller fraction of that.

abakker 2y ago
you are right. The thing that is interesting is that pumping loads overall take a lot of the grid's energy, it's just that most pumps are refrigeration loads, not water transport.
avianlyric 2y ago
Great thing about heating water, is that it stays hot after you’ve heated it. Water heating is basically the poster child for “demand-response” technologies. You can easily heat your water a few hours earlier than normal with basically no consequences to the user. But you need to get reasonable smart about modelling people water usage, as people don’t tend forget or forgive a cold shower.
- practicemaths 2y ago
  What about tankless water heaters? You can eliminate greenhouse gas emissions for heating and be more efficient with energy usage overall.
  - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    tankless heaters use slightly less energy, but they use it in a really annoying way. the optimal design for a heavily renewable grid is a heat pump water heater with a tank
    - blitzar 2y ago
      The optimal design for a heavily renewable grid is solar water heating a tank in home whenever the sun shines, falling back on a heat pump water heater with a tank.
      - practicemaths 2y ago
        That's for maximizing energy efficiency. Tankless I think might be a tad bit more easier and cheaper to implement than this. Regardless the point is eliminating the use of natural gas in heating water is itself a benefit.
      - organsnyder 2y ago
        That's only optimal if you know you'll need 100% of the heated water (or have a way to store it). While photovoltaics are going to be less efficient than direct water heating, you can direct the energy to other uses if you don't need more hot water.
        bluGill 2y ago
        Large tanks of water are about the cheapest way we know of to store energy. Batteries store more energy, but are extremely expensive.
        organsnyder 2y ago

XorNot 2y ago

There's been other responses here pointing out that municipal water delivery pumping probably isn't a large electricity consumer, but it's also worth noting that even if it was you can't voluntarily shutdown water-delivery in large distribution systems - you have to maintain pressure and flow to prevent back contamination of the system from leaks. It's why you get boil-water advisories when there's a general outage - because dirt and bacteria can get back into the pipes and it takes time to be sure they've been flushed out of the system.