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I think you could satisfy both 2/3 by dividing the land between privatization and public park/monument/wilderness area rather than the current status of BLM leasing. A world in which the BLM leases to a rancher satisfies neither efficient usage nor preservation of natural beauty.
The real impediment is the lack of water. We need to force California to repeat rules against desalination, especially since the excess of cheap (even free!) power during the middle of the day is an excellent match for plants that can use ~infinite excess power on a moment's notice and then give it back later. A win/win for growth and clean energy -- of course CA can't fucking do it.
Of course, you'd have to let them buy power at the actual market-clearing price, by the hour. That's a minor technical glitch.
Can you steelman California's argument against desalination? Or at least explain it. It just seems absurd given their situation.
I don't know enough to steelman, but the usual concern is what you do with all the high salinity effluent. Opponents claim that dumping it in the ocean raises the salinity and kills marine life in the area.
Presumably, extract useful minerals, turn the rest into salt palaces and make it a tourist trap.
I'd assumed based on prior discussion that efficient desalination would require enough power output that it'd require either lots of fossil fuels, or nuclear. Are renewables in California competitive enough for desalination, now?
There are some plans along those lines. Presumably you can't turn it into salt palaces because you're gonna run out of land to stack the salt.
He's assuming batteries at 10c/Wh, which is... Remarkably optimistic because the support infrastructure (chargers, wiring, BMS, disconnects, inverters, housing, etc.) is going to quadruple it after all's said and done. You need a climate controlled environment for batteries with costs closer to a data center than a warehouse: lots of power electronics active during the day means a lot of cooling, especially in the desert!
I've gotten cells and a BMS alone for 8c/W, but only due to a pricing error.
Lots of very naive napkin math from someone who needs to get a few micro solar projects under his belt before planning macrogigamega-projects.
You don't even need to keep desal running 24/7, it's not that capital intensive. Although he hasn't covered pumping costs either, which is tremendous when you're going both ways (and pumping brine all the way back to the ocean apparently? Why not just do the desal on the coast? It's a hell of a lot easier to ship electricity than water.)
All in all storm water recovery and more reservoirs is going to be a hell of a lot cheaper.
TL;Dr I think this guy might be retarded
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Desal has gotten both more energy efficient and more capital-intensive. So if you want the advantages of the new tech it's no longer a simple dump load you can afford to only run 3 hours a day in summer.
That's the problem with a lot of suggested uses for excess solar and (especially) wind power, really.
If you used the cheaper kinds of thermal desal, it's possible you could run it on solar-electric during the day and waste heat from gas turbines during the evening. Dilutes the capital costs of a plant that would otherwise spend a lot of time sitting idle. Makes use of the idle gas plant's electrical infrastructure during low demand hours too, nice bonus.
Thermal's out of favor, but RO has a lower efficiency advantage for treating seawater, which is like 5-10x worse than the worst brackish groundwater. Gets to the point where you may as well just evap the stuff.
If you had plenty of nuclear or coal in the mix you could use the cheap nighttime power to run it too. And if you get the utilization up that much you could afford a proper modern membrane system running 24/7
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