IIRC, California overproduces electricity during sunny summer days due to solar, but solar production drops in the evenings right when demand is peaking due to people getting home from work and cooking dinner and whatnot. There are better applications for that energy than desalination though - battery storage right now, and maybe running electrolyzers for green hydrogen production someday in the future.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 month ago
Is there a state with excess energy that can't be sold or used in a better way?
compostgoblin@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 month ago
Do we have numbers on how much electricity actually gets discarded in a year?
Bustedknuckles@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Locally, yes. Solar (and wind) energy isn’t uniform in timing or location, so when there’s too much of it relative to consumption, there needs to be a profitable way to use it rather than just dumping it into resistive heating or letting the panels wear out faster at open circuit. Desalination is a pretty good idea since places with high solar resources also tend to be poorer in water resources. The challenge is the capital costs of desalination plants and competition with existing water sources - water rights are a giant ratfuck by themselves. I think it’ll make sense to build desalination plants that can absorb excess energy generation, but if there’s even political will for it, they’ll take a lot of time to build up
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 month ago
You could also have a power grid and distribute the excess electricity to the next state where it's cloudy. Or do other things with it. Or build the AI datacenters there that Google etc are currently planning to provide with amall nuclear reactors...
visor841@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Transporting electricity isn’t easy, you have to have large enough interconnects to handle the energy you’re moving around.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 month ago
Entire Europe is connected. Sure we're still missing quite some cables to get the regeneratives to where they're needed. But it's no problem to move around quite some energry across parts of a continent.