Abstract
Seawater desalination is already a largely adopted option to cope with the scarcity of natural water resources, but the increasing concerns about water availability in the future make it even more attractive. Because desalination is a highly energy-demanding process, its coupling with renewable energy sources is an essential step for the sustainable production of desalinated water at large scales. In this work we analyze the potential to deploy large-scale seawater desalination using reverse osmosis (RO) under the hypothesis that all the required energy is provided by photovoltaic (PV) production. A simulation over the extended Mediterranean area shows that securing desalinated water for up to about 200 million people in the region is technically possible using PV only, and the benefits of energy storage in batteries and/or water reservoirs are usually higher than its costs. This suggests that water management policies could consider desalination more broadly and encourage PV-based RO, as a possible win-win and cost-effective strategy to improve water and energy resources security.
Highlights
The growing need for freshwater resources, and increasing concerns about water availability in the future, are making seawater desalination an attractive option in many regions worldwide
Coupling desalination with renewable energy sources is essential for the sustainable production of desalinated water
Based on the analysis presented here, we have shown that supplying desalinated water to 100–200 million people in the extended Mediterranean region requires a PV installed capacity of 14.2–28.4 GW, which is large but acceptable in the context
Summary
The growing need for freshwater resources, and increasing concerns about water availability in the future, are making seawater desalination an attractive option in many regions worldwide. Electricity can be stored through the power grid; where the grid is not available (e.g., small islands) or has structural constraints (which may often be the case when a large power generation or demand is localized on a grid segment), it may be important to limit the exchanges with the grid through partial off-grid energy storage. This may even become critical when thinking desalination as a main source of freshwater over a region. We present and discuss the following performance indicators under different plant configurations: (1) percent of the time when the plant can be run without requiring power from the grid (plant autonomy); (2) the total energy exchanged with the grid (a proxy for the cost of grid use); (3) the statistics of power exchanges with the grid (a proxy of the impact of large-scale desalination on the grid); and (4) the size of the required at-plant energy storage
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