
As Cape Town water crisis deepens, scientists prepare for ‘Day Zero’ - sdee21
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01134-x
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markatkinson
I live in Cape Town and I can tell you now people are freaked out and
panicking. Every supermarket is sold out of water by lunch time. Driving
around Cape Town you are accompanied by fleets of vehicles delivering large
water tanks, and some people are straight up selling their houses, pulling
their kids out of school and moving.

One of the borehole companies actually now runs a weekly auction for their
services and the highest bidder gets a borehole! Pretty crazy.

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nickthemagicman
Scary. Phoenix and So Cal aren't doing super great in this area as well.

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craftyguy
They only have two long-term options:

1) depopulate those regions by causing folks to leave (e.g. no longer
providing water services)

or

2) deploy costly (and energy-intensive) mechanisms to continue to provide
water (desalination, or piping in water from some other place that will likely
dry up next)

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amluto
Desalination has high capital costs, but the energy usage isn't really a
problem at all.

A modern plant uses 2.5-3.5 kWh/m^3 [1]. My household uses something like 9
m^3 per month, so that would be about 27 kWh per month. At PG&E's rather high
peak rates, that's $10/month, which is less than the marginal cost of that
water. Of course, to the extent that energy costs matter, desalination plants
will not use retail power at peak times.

[1] [https://www.amtaorg.com/wp-
content/uploads/7_MembraneDesalin...](https://www.amtaorg.com/wp-
content/uploads/7_MembraneDesalinationPowerUsagePutInPerspective.pdf)

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henrygrew
are there any consumer desalination units available that one can buy and setup
in their home?

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jnwatson
But where do you get the salt water?

