That’s 30l from ~10 hours a day, I don’t run it continuously. Too noisy at night, for one. And no, the only Cape Town electricity generation is sea-cooled nuclear, all the rest of our electricity comes from elsewhere in the country (1000s of km away), so negligible water is being withdrawn from the local supply to generate my electricity. Also, the machine will soon be running off PV solar, so even that is covered.
And the issue isn’t whether it’s efficient, I knew it to be dreadfully inefficient. The issue is whether it provides sufficient clean, ready-to-drink water for my family’s survival. And it does that.
Umm, how do power plants use up water? If they use it for coolant, the hot water gets pumped back into the river it came from, so there’s no net change. Hydroelectric dams don’t function during water shortages.
No, they do use quite a lot of water (quite a bit just evaporates). But all our coal-fired plants are nowhere near the drought-hit parts of the country.
How is Kirstenbosch Garden faring? I visited Cape Town in 2002 and loved those gardens. I hope the drought isn’t doing them irreparable harm. Cape Town is one of my favorite cities of all the places I’ve visited, so I’m definitely following this story closely.
Kirstenbosch is located on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain, which typically receives above average rainfall. (CT will average about 788mm a year, but that area can receive up to 2000mm in a year.)