As we all know Australia is a very dry country where water is one of our most valuable resources.<\/p>\n
So how much water do we need to generate our electricity?<\/p>\n
The generation of 1 kWh of electricity by way of nuclear power uses 2.3 litres of water.<\/p>\n
By contrast, coal is slightly more efficient as coal power requires only 1.9 litres of water per kWh.<\/p>\n
Even solar thermal power (not solar pv), although one of the greenest forms of energy out there, still requires a great deal of water, about 3.6 litres per kilowatt hour. \u00a0But it does have a saving grace in that solar thermal power plants re-use as much water as possible in a trough system.\u00a0 The solar power is used to heat and boil the water, which in turn makes steam spin a turbine which then generates electrical power.<\/span><\/p>\n A solar thermal plant in Israel is taking the hot water after it has spun the turbines and is feeding it to homes and factories for heating. Nice idea.<\/p>\n The renewable energy source that uses the least amount of water is wind power which uses a minuscule four millilitres per kilowatt hour. It is only used to clean the turbines.<\/p>\n The other technology which consumes very little water is solar power in the form of solar PV panels which uses about 110 millilitres per kilowatt hour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As we all know Australia is a very dry country where water is one of our most valuable resources. So how much water do we need to generate our electricity? The generation of 1 kWh of electricity by way of nuclear power uses 2.3 litres of water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solar-hot-water","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n