How long before the USA invades Canada for water?

[reel]

I understand that forms of power generation need water, but I read not all equally?

No, it's pretty much all the same.  The cooling water is used to recondense the steam after it has passed through the steam turbine so that it can be sent back to the heat source, become steam again and go back through the turbine.  This is the basic operational premise of almost every power plant on the planet.  Really all that varies is the source of the heat that creates the steam.

[reel]

You can see here a schematic of a nuclear plant, a solar thermal plant, and a coal plant.



https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/PressurizedWaterReactor.gif/500px-PressurizedWaterReactor.gif">



http://www.bls.gov/green/solar_power/diagram_2.png">



http://images.slideplayer.com/13/3977501/slides/slide_7.jpg">



All have exactly the same process, same steam turbine, heat exchanger, and condenser, with the same need for cooling water in the condenser.  Just a different heat source (smashing atoms, collecting sunlight, or burning coal).



Obviously water consumption would scale with power output, but all of the options would require roughly the same water for a given power.  There are also different methods for handling the cooling water that consume more or less water (as explained in the article), but those can be applied equally to any of the plant types.

[Twenty Dollars]

Large scale water purification is the future.

[Anonymous]

California's ambitious renewable energy plans are using up a lot of the state's precious water resources. Lavish living celebrities watering their massive lawns is another.



https://www.technologyreview.com/s/523856/solar-thermal-technology-poses-challenges-for-drought-stricken-california/">https://www.technologyreview.com/s/5238 ... alifornia/">https://www.technologyreview.com/s/523856/solar-thermal-technology-poses-challenges-for-drought-stricken-california/

California's ambitious goal of getting a third of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030 is being tested by its driest year on record, part of a multiyear drought that's seriously straining water supplies. The state plan relies heavily on solar thermal technology, but this type of solar power also typically consumes huge quantities of water.

They should use salt water cooling.  Much better use of salt water than desalination!



Also, the same cooling requirements exist in coal, gas, and nuclear plants.  The steam cycle that generates power is basically the same in most industrial power plants.  All that changes is the heat source.  Thus this article is a bit misleading.  It's not the fact that it's renewable power that is generating the requirement for water, it's the fact that there is a requirement for power.



The article should more clearly have stated that by indicating that "this type of solar power" was not differentiating solar thermal power from other types of power generation, but from photo voltaics - the other type of solar power that does not have this cooling requirement.

I think the reason the Seoul Brother posted this is to make a point abou misleading articles and not the content of the link itself.

[Anonymous]

California's ambitious renewable energy plans are using up a lot of the state's precious water resources. Lavish living celebrities watering their massive lawns is another.



https://www.technologyreview.com/s/523856/solar-thermal-technology-poses-challenges-for-drought-stricken-california/">https://www.technologyreview.com/s/5238 ... alifornia/">https://www.technologyreview.com/s/523856/solar-thermal-technology-poses-challenges-for-drought-stricken-california/

California's ambitious goal of getting a third of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030 is being tested by its driest year on record, part of a multiyear drought that's seriously straining water supplies. The state plan relies heavily on solar thermal technology, but this type of solar power also typically consumes huge quantities of water.

They should use salt water cooling.  Much better use of salt water than desalination!



Also, the same cooling requirements exist in coal, gas, and nuclear plants.  The steam cycle that generates power is basically the same in most industrial power plants.  All that changes is the heat source.  Thus this article is a bit misleading.  It's not the fact that it's renewable power that is generating the requirement for water, it's the fact that there is a requirement for power.



The article should more clearly have stated that by indicating that "this type of solar power" was not differentiating solar thermal power from other types of power generation, but from photo voltaics - the other type of solar power that does not have this cooling requirement.

I understand that all forms of power generation need water, but I read not all equally?

I had a link from SaskPower about concentrating solar power, but I cannot find it. I found this instead.

https://www.greenbiz.com/sites/default/files/inline/power-water-kqed.jpg">

Wet-cooled concentrated solar power plants use slightly more water than coal and natural gas; however, concentrated solar power plants can be designed to use dry-cooling.



Although wet-cooled CSP plants generally consume more water than many other forms of energy, they consume one-third of the amount that alfalfa and cotton consume per acre and about one-half of

the water a golf course consumes per acre.

[reel]

Fundamentally, that chart makes no sense at all since the heating and cooling systems are separate.  Different cooling systems result in different water consumption, but different heat sources don't.



They must be measuring existing plants and rather than separating by cooling type (wet, dry, once-through), they separate by heat source for all but solar.  A lot of newer NG plants are dry cooled, so that's probably what skews the NG down.  Then if you combined the wet and dry solar, you'd probably end up with a consumption lower than coal or nuke since solar is common with both cooling types.



Again misleading info as they only split solar by cooling type, not the others.

[reel]

The local NG plant here is a once through, so technically it "uses" no water, but it pumps a crap load through and sends it back into the sea several degrees warmer.

[Anonymous]

Good information all around about power generation. Herm is right, the link I posted was not really about power from the sun.