Resource Information Applied to Water Sources and Discharges at Existing and Potential Power Plant Sites in Arizona and the Southwest: Project Completion Report

Abstract

A growing demand for energy production in Arizona has increased the need for assembling and analyzing water resource information relative to energy production, especially electrical power generation. Unit water requirements for cooling of electrical plants, combined with projections of future electrical power demands in Arizona, provide a perspective on future quantities of water needed for cooling. Probabilistic estimates of storage reserves in Arizona groundwater basins indicate that some prospective plant sites can be supplied from groundwater for the 30 -year life of the plant, while others cannot. An estimate of comparative cost for supplying groundwater versus municipal wastewater for cooling electrical plants at selected sites in Arizona showed that use of wastewater would result in considerable savings over use of groundwater, at all sites considered.