Hacker News Reader

Historically desalinization has been an extremely inefficient way to produce drinking water -- energy intensive while discharing a large fraction of the input water. I doubt the fundamental economics of desalinization have changed.

View on HN

The cost estimates (at the end customer) are all right there in the article. $5 of month on the top side, and estimated to be something like 3x the price of importing drinking water.

I once found a table that lasted the energy requirements for Los Angeles water sources. A lot of sources have minimal energy needs. But something like 10% require about 50% of the energy needed for desalinization.

There is a lot of inane nimby stuff mixed in with reasonable concerns. For instance owners of hobby horse ranches in the San Gabriels suing to stop the California's high speed rail's plans to run a tunnel 1000+ feet under their property. Opposition to desalinization is like that.

We should be running desal on the salt ponds in San Francisco Bay. The water currently being intentionally lost to evaporation will instead be captured and the salt will be extracted faster. Seems like a win win.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com