pstarr wrote:It appears so Tanada
After three years of construction, the San Diego County Water Authority and Poseidon Water dedicated the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant on Dec. 14, 2015, joined by more than 600 dignitaries and supporters from across California.
The plant is producing approximately 50 million gallons per day of locally controlled water for San Diego County, helping to minimize the region’s vulnerability to statewide drought conditions. It is part of a $1 billion project that includes the nation’s largest and most technologically advanced and energy-efficient seawater desalination plant, a 10-mile large-diameter pipeline and improvements to Water Authority facilities for distributing desalinated seawater throughout San Diego County. The plant meets about 7 to 10 percent of the region’s water demand – about one third of all the water generated in the county.
Yes, it's online - didn't you see your lights dim when it started up at full capacity? As Pete's energy/million-gallon chart showed, desalinization is an energy disaster. The pumping effort per million gallons to push the salt water through the desalinating RO membranes is HUGE, even compared to all the pumping effort to get Shasta Lake water to flow through 700 miles of aquaduct south through the Central Valley, then over the Tehachapi's on its way to LA and San Diego. One thing to remember about pumping water 3,000 feet uphill that really improves the net energy efficiency. When it goes back down hill, you can reclaim most of the pumping energy (about 75%) by running it through hydro turbines, which all these water projects do.
There in no reclaiming the massive pumping energy required to push salt water through the RO membranes to desalinate it. It is "lost" energy (It's an "entropy" thing). San Diego would have been much further ahead investing those $billions on advanced water conservation features, as now they are saddled with a system that is entirely dependent on massive amounts of inexpensive electricity from NG-fired power plants. In the renewable-only all-electric world of the future, we will have to make every kilowatt-hour count, even if it means "importing" water from 700 miles away, ramping back our commercial farming-on-desert, AND building another dam or two. Desalinization will be a feel-good luxury we will not be able to afford.