With Sydney now committed to building a desalination plant, Melbourne and Adelaide soon to follow, and Perth considering a second plant, isn’t it time to give up on the anti-desal movement?
With improvements in technology and efficiency, the cost of desalination are rapidly approaching the levels of more conventional water treatments. The ocean is a 100% reliable source of water, and sea levels are rising! The NSW government has committed to powering the Sydney plant with green energy, and the brine pollution issues can be addressed with the appropriate outfall solution.
What is the downside?
June 26, 2007 at 12:38 am
While desal is getting more affordable, would it not be wise to have alternative water sources for the desal plant. Stormwater harvesting, aquifers, treated effluent may be viable sources to add to the seawater intake. This would alleviate the problem of just bringing more water into the system, using it once and then putting it out to sea via the outfalls. It would also improve the efficiency of the desal plant by lowering the average TDS of the influent therefore improving the ratio of water produced vs. energy consumed.
November 4, 2007 at 10:57 am
Hi,
interesting blog you have setup. i would make the point that desalination should be an absolute last resort. The energy resources required for desalination are massive, and energy costs are certainly not going to get any cheaper.
Melbourne is going to build a 150 GL desal plant. However our coal fired power stations consume 100 GL per year. They want to make the desal plant greenhouse neutral by using windpower but the desal plant alone would consume all of victoria’s current wind farm capacity.
cheers, iain.