LQD - Water rights in California and Australia | 10 comments (10 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: LQD - Water rights in California and Australia (none / 0)

That.. is amenable to technological fixes. As a proof of concept, lets consider the utterly brute force approach: "Fission and desalination":
Reverse osmosis runs 3-5 kwh/m3, so that works out to..
30000000000 kwh/year? So..
30000000000 kwh/1650000kw*24h*365*0.9 =
3 EPRs running a 90% duty cycle would cover it and spare. If you think manufacturing that much osmosis membrane is unreasonable, add another reactor and the entire thing works using distillation. Water apocalypse averted - This is a small infrastructure program, but as such things go california has done bigger.

by Thomas on Wed Apr 16th, 2014 at 05:29:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD - Water rights in California and Australia (none / 0)

.. is not a small. Gah.

by Thomas on Wed Apr 16th, 2014 at 05:30:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD - Water rights in California and Australia (none / 0)

California's annual energy consumption was 250,384 million KW-hrs in 2010, or 250.384 TeraWatt-hours/year. We require 10 cubic KM of fresh water per year, or 10x10⁹ cubic meters. At 5 KW-Hr per cubic meter that would be 50x10¹² Watt-hrs or 50 TeraWatt-hours/year, ~ 20% of present annual consumption, if my math is correct.

The levelized cost of wind power in 2010 dollars was $90/megawatt-hr. 50TW-Hrs would cost $4.5 billion/year. Note that intermittentcy is not a problem for desalinization unless underestimated. Overestimated, the system could load balance the western grid. In 2012 the value of California agricultural production was $45 billion, so getting the irrigation water from desalinization instead of ground water would add about 10% to the cost. And average wind speed is only going to increase.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Thu Apr 17th, 2014 at 10:08:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LQD - Water rights in California and Australia (none / 0)

An additional advantage to irrigating from desalinized water is that it would stop accumulation of trace elements such as selenium in agricultural soil from ground water. The percentage increased cost estimated above is low, because it is based on the total California agricultural production, while the proposed system only serves the San Joaquin Valley and adjacent areas.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Thu Apr 17th, 2014 at 10:15:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]

LQD - Water rights in California and Australia | 10 comments (10 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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