>What will it take to bring this kind of technology to Southern California?

San Diego county is already getting a desalination plant in Carlsbad, although it's projected to cost more, for much less water: $530 million for ~18 billion gallons a year. No idea why it's so expensive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlsbad_desalination_plant

Great benchmark for California... Actually, it looks like the project is closer to $780 million for the plant (not sure why the Wikipedia summary is off). [1] Central question is, can the Sorek method/scale be implemented in SoCal to get better results? Can it be run on integrated solar or other renewables?

[1] http://carlsbaddesal.com/carlsbad-final-schedule-taking-shap...

Why did the bay bridge cost such an exorbitant amount, for a very simple structure that is now falling apart? Same reason probably.

These plants are running on cheap natural gas; Israeli price controls are looking at about $6 per million BTU [1] whereas US prices are around $8-10 [2]. The US could have cheap natural gas, too; Even cheaper than Israel could get it. But we can't move it around without pipelines, which is limiting both our production and consumption. What's blocking the pipelines? Nimbyism, to be short.

[1]http://www.platts.com/latest-news/natural-gas/jerusalem/isra... [2]http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_dcu_nus_m.htm (I'm fudging the BTU->Cubic Foot conversion here, but it's darn close to 1000:1)

You call it nimbyism. I call it climate change.

Making natural gas cheaper should not be one of our priorities. It's non-renewable and contributes to carbon emissions.

It's worth pointing out that Natural Gas is an extremely clean fossil fuel, as far as fossil fuels go. It's a shame that so much is simply burnt off rather than harnessed. That doesn't help anyone.

Yeah, from a purely non-political, engineering-only perspective, nuclear power and desalination seem like a match made in heaven: No carbon; steady, predictable power loads; near-limitless demand for agricultural freshwater in CA; near-guaranteed markets because of indefinite CA droughts; even a chance to do something useful with the waste heat.

No, no, no. Desal is not ever going to be used to irrigate crops in California. You would need to build something like 100 of the largest desal plants in existence to meet the ag demand (~= 100k AF/day). Oh and a way to pump it all a hundred miles inland, over a coastal mountain range. Also, there are significant environmental impacts associated with both desal and nukes which you have completely ignored. Pretend like technology is going to rush in and save the day delays our transition to a realistic, sustainable way of life.

Civilizationally, technology has pretty much always saved the day.

> Making natural gas cheaper should not be one of our priorities. It's non-renewable and contributes to carbon emissions.

Your attitude is WHY there is so much CO2 emission.

If everyone switched to natural gas no one would worry about global warming. You would not be happy if CO2 emission was slashed in half in one go? Because that's what switching to natural gas would do.

Instead people bash it because it's not perfect.

Quite the opposite: If you actually cared about climate change cheaper natural gas would be your top priority.

Natural gas may be a step on the way but it is obviously not a destination.

Sure, but it's still an extremely useful step. Fighting against it does not help the environment.

From my understanding it's not unreasonable that someone whose goal is not "reduce CO2 emissions" but "reduce CO2 missions to a sustainable level" might see natural gas as a waste of time, diverting energy that might be better spent on a long-term solution.

Everyone seems to want chemical storage of Solar Energy.

Everyone keeps looking into batteries and they are not yet sufficient.

Why not store the massive amounts of Solar that Southern California receives during the day as clean drinking water?

I like this idea very much. Make water only during the day. Water consumption is highest during the day anyway, and water can be stored much easier than electricity.

I wonder what the amortized cost of solar energy is? It's probably still more expensive than Israel's $6 per million BTU.

In a desert with plentiful sunshine for an application where you don't need to worry about distribution and storage, I would expect solar to be quite competitive with even the notional price of fossil fuel.

When you compare it with the real price of fossil fuel (i.e. add the negative externality of carbon dioxide emission to the notional price), solar wins by a country mile.

Good luck finding water to desalinate in the desert!

Many deserts are within convenient pipeline range of the sea. Including Israel and California, the deserts being discussed here.

Another data point: In Sweden water costs 15-25 kr/m^3 or 1.5-3 dollars/m^3 and we get it untreated directly from lakes. So $0.58 is very cheap even if it is the bulk price and it quadruples before it arrives at the end customer.