Water Storage Instead of Energy Storage for Desalination Powered by Renewable Energy—King Island Case Study

Aya Tafech, Dia Milani and Ali Abbas
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Aya Tafech: School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the Univeristy of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Dia Milani: School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the Univeristy of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Ali Abbas: School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the Univeristy of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

Energies, 2016, vol. 9, issue 10, 1-17

Abstract: In this paper, we scrutinized the energy storage options used in mitigation of the intermittent nature of renewable energy resources for desalination process. In off-grid islands and remote areas, renewable energy is often combined with appropriate energy storage technologies (ESTs) to provide a consistent and reliable electric power source. We demonstrated that in developing a renewable energy scheme for desalination purposes, product (water) storage is a more reliable and techno-economic solution. For a King Island (Southeast Australia) case-study, electric power production from renewable energy sources was sized under transient conditions to meet the dynamic demand of freshwater throughout the year. Among four proposed scenarios, we found the most economic option by sizing a 13 MW solar photovoltaic (PV) field to instantly run a proportional RO desalination plant and generate immediate freshwater in diurnal times without the need for energy storage. The excess generated water was stored in 4 × 50 ML (mega liter) storage tanks to meet the load in those solar deficit times. It was also demonstrated that integrating well-sized solar PV with wind power production shows more consistent energy/water profiles that harmonize the transient nature of energy sources with the water consumption dynamics, but that would have trivial economic penalties caused by larger desalination and water storage capacities.

Keywords: energy storage; water storage; off-grid desalination; King Island; transient conditions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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