Hello George, how you're ...

Hello George, how you're doing? The São Paulo Northern shore lives, from a long time on, a very similar paradigm. In summer vacations (that goes from november until the end of january), the shore suffer with a great scarcity of fresh water, seeing that is necessary to increase the water sending from the interior to this part of the state. And even with this current option of bring fresh water from other parts by pipes, SABESP (the agency that supply water and wastewater treatment in São Paulo State) in seeking for some alternative solutions, as the desalination process. But what is their concern about the desalination process on the São Paulo Northern shore? electricity as you said? not exactly. SABESP main concern is to ask for a bid covering all the technical, economical and polical aspects of the supply chain (captation, desalination, quality control, distribution and concentrate discharge) of the desalination process, paying for those services by the m³ of treated water (BOT). Obviously that this is the most dificult part of the job (find the resources and the company capable to do that in large scale - 1 to 3 m³ per second). Using the largest seawater desalination plant in Brazil as exemple, located in the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha (543 km from the shore), there are a population of 3.400 people and a visiting of 700 turist per month. the system produces 27 m³/h of fresh water to supply the whole island, at the same time with a weir. curently they are having some trobles because the Island weir became dry. because of that, the water in the islands became scarcer. At the same time, tthe eletricity of this system is provided form a power generator plant by diesel (90%) and eolic energy (10%), and the disttibution is done part by pipes and part by trucks. So, analysing those cases, I think that the energy for the system supply is not a isolate issue on the desalination on islands, but the whole operational thing (collect, treat, distribute, discharge, treat the sewage, make the quality control, etc, etc.) as well the money (who is going to pay for this structure?) must be "on focus" before take this decision of install and use water from desalination plants in Islands. I really think that it may be a viable option, but the issues shown above must be analysed first. Well, that's my opinion, thanks for read it! Best Regards, Léo.