> Huh, avocados require tonnes of water and California has recurring droughts.
California has abundance of solar capacity deployed, to the point of negative prices of electricity around noon ([1]), which means more electricity is produced more than consumed. California should become serious about utilizing the wasted energy on desalination.
While it's important to do desalination responsibly without creating dead patches of the ocean from brine, it's an engineering challenge that has technical solutions, not a miracle that we can't have.
It will be like that until 2pm or so, which gives 4.5 hours to do useful stuff either for free or very cheap (as obviously, the prices will go somewhat up, if demand increases).
Desalination costs are dominated by energy costs. And I am making a point that California is in a perfect position to solve its water problems with the excess of solar capacity by using it to desalinate ocean water during the time of day when energy is essentially free.
Yeah, desalination is perfectly aligned with solar energy availability both on a daily and annual cycle: More water needs during the day, more sun during the day. More water needs during the summer, more sun during the summer.
Desalination plants are like many energy production facilities; they have significant ramp-up and ramp-down times. They can't just ramp up more when energy is cheap and ramp down afterwards.
I mean, I broadly agree with you that California should build more desalination plants, I just don't think the marginal price of desalinated water will be free.
California has abundance of solar capacity deployed, to the point of negative prices of electricity around noon ([1]), which means more electricity is produced more than consumed. California should become serious about utilizing the wasted energy on desalination.
While it's important to do desalination responsibly without creating dead patches of the ocean from brine, it's an engineering challenge that has technical solutions, not a miracle that we can't have.
1. http://www.energyonline.com/Data/GenericData.aspx?DataId=20 (you might need to specify the date range to see a graph with negative prices around noon)