Most renewable powered desalination schemes are hybrids that displace fossil fuel power when renewable power is available. Their economic viability depends only on whether the renewable power source can generate electricity more cheaply than the fuels that it displaces. The framework used here by KAPSARC compares standalone plants that are powered only by renewable energy and therefore incorporate storage, either of input energy to allow the plant to run full time or of produced water to level out the production of an oversized plant.
Bertrand Rioux
Bertrand is a research fellow focusing on the impact of market regulation and liberalization in energy markets. An experienced energy systems…
Bertrand is a research fellow focusing on the impact of market regulation and liberalization in energy markets. An experienced energy systems model developer (linear optimization and mixed complementary problems), he is working on developing the KAPSARC Energy Model (KEM) as a decision support tool for analyzing price regulation in energy economies. Bertrand has contributed to the development of KEM Saudi Arabia and is the lead developer of KEM China, studying the impact of government regulation in the coal, power and natural gas markets. He was previously employed as a research assistant at the Canadian Space Agency.