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WCome back to Current Climate. From legal battles in the Southwest over access to Colorado River water, to below-average snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, to Corpus Christi, Texas, facing a looming shortage, steady supplies of fresh water are a bigger concern for large parts of the country.
Desalination is one option for boosting supply, and is already doing so at plants in California, Texas and Florida. But it is problematic due to high costs and high energy needs. It can also harm aquatic life if seawater intake systems are not carefully designed. But a startup and a Los Angeles County water utility are testing a new type of desalination that could provide large quantities of fresh water, using 40 percent less energy than the conventional variety.
Instead of pumping millions of gallons of seawater ashore and blasting it at high pressure through a series of salt-removing membranes, the desalination pods developed by Menlo Park, Calif. OceanWell do the process deep in the ocean, anchored 400 meters below the surface, taking advantage of the naturally high pressure at that process depth. Seawater flows through a series of screens, lined with reverse osmosis membranes designed to prevent the smallest forms of marine life from being sucked in, with fresh water pumped from the base and brine pumped back into the ocean from the top.
“Depth is a function of the pressure required to a [reverse osmosis] membrane to overcome osmotic pressure. It’s about 800 PSI, and that’s usually what you have in an onshore plant – big pumps pushing the water to 800 PSI,” said David Pederson, general manager of the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District. “So it uses about 40% less energy because of that.”
Tests of the technology at the Los Virgines reservoir, north of Los Angeles, under much lower pressure, have confirmed that the concept works. Now the goal is to build a large, commercial-scale version of the system, a water farm with dozens of nodes, off the coast of Malibu that could pump between 50 and 60 million gallons of fresh water back to land per day, starting around 2030.
One factor to consider is a power source for the electricity the pods require, said OceanWell CEO Robert Bergstrom. This could come from connecting to an onshore energy source, although connecting the units to an offshore wind turbine would be a cheaper solution. Although the Trump administration is working to block offshore wind projects, California still plans to add them along its coast in the coming years — likely after Trump leaves office.
“We would love to be along that power line,” Bergstrom said.
The big read
GM is doubling down on energy businesses to serve data center electricity demand
Months after scaling back its lofty goals for electric vehicles, General Motors is stepping up its focus on energy technology to keep up with data center electricity needs. Now, plans have been announced to develop a cheaper, more durable battery for large-scale energy storage.
The Detroit-based automaker is working with startup Peak Energy to develop a sodium-ion battery, with the goal of commercializing it by 2028. It aims to outpace the dominant battery cell technology used for energy storage packs right now — LFP (lithium iron phosphate), which is dominated by China. Sodium batteries are cheaper to use than LFP because they do not need an additional cooling system. They also have a 20-year lifespan and are made from materials that can be sourced from the US, the company said at a briefing in San Francisco on Tuesday.
“Sodium ion is actually the best chemistry for this application. And when I say sodium ion is better, I mean GM’s version of sodium ion,” Kurt Kelty, GM battery chief and longtime Tesla battery executive, told Forbes. He said GM is seeing great results from its prototypes, even in scorching temperatures of 55 Celsius (131 Fahrenheit).
Read more here
Hot topic
Jeff Prosserman, CEO and co-founder of Voltpost, on using urban streetlights to boost EV charging options
What is the benefit of using street lights to charge EVs while people are parked in public spaces?
By retrofitting existing infrastructure, we can significantly reduce the cost, schedule and physical footprint of charger deployment in the built environment. And we’re able to power-interface either through the feed from the existing conduit to provide the 220 volts, 9.6 kilowatts, per charger, or drop the power from overhead utility poles.
We’re saving $10,000 at a given location when you compare retrofitting existing infrastructure to the fabrication and engraving work required for a stand-alone charger. This is because you tear up the pavement or road and create new force. You are essentially creating a much higher initial setup cost for the setup.
How many cars can be charged simultaneously by the utility pole system?
We can develop a single or double port charger on a given pole of different shapes and sizes, round, octagonal, wooden auxiliary poles, ornate, decorative poles, in modular and upgradeable form. And we can have different payment methods for the entry point, whether it’s QR code input, RFID card reader payment, or credit card reader payment. It just depends on the website to provide flexibility to the website host. The other thing is that it has over 25 feet of cable built into the housing, which unlocks upon the initiation of this charging event. The charger is located 10 feet above ground level. This maximizes reliability and compatibility because there is obviously no cable exposed for vandalism or weather etc to maximize the chargers uptime.
How many units do you have in operation?
We have 20 to 30 live today, and we have north of 500 but under a thousand on contract. I don’t have the exact number off the top of my head, but it’s growing. We continue to win contracts across the country at this point. It’s very much an upgrade moment for the company.
Certainly, last year, as I’m sure you could imagine, with the headwinds of federal policy, it became a slower growth year. We had three federal contracts that were frozen and just a number of other factors to investigate. But at this point, it was all just a speed bump, not the end of the road, and we’re back to efficient development at scale.
What else are we reading?
A mysterious “cold drop” in the ocean has scientists puzzled. A new study says it’s an ominous sign (CNN)
Qcells’ new factory doubles Georgia’s current capacity for the production of solar cells (Canary Media)
Solar power is hitting new milestones in the US even though Trump boosts coal over clean energy (Associated Press)
Vinyl records are making a comeback, but they’re polluting the planet. These tags try to help (Los Angeles Times)
