New Stanford-led research reveals how water systems, from desalination plants to wastewater treatment facilities, could help make renewable energy more affordable and dependable. The study, published Sept. 27 in Nature Water, presents a framework to measure how water systems can adjust their energy use to help balance power grid supply and demand. … As grids rely more on renewable energy sources like wind and solar, balancing energy supply and demand becomes more challenging. Typically, energy storage technologies like batteries help with this, but batteries are expensive. An alternative is to promote demand-side flexibility from large-load consumers like water conveyance and treatment providers. Water systems – which use up to 5% of the nation’s electricity – could offer similar benefits to batteries by adjusting their operations to align with real-time energy needs, according to [Akshay] Rao and his co-authors.

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