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Where solar meets water + a spotlight on Australia where you should only flush the 3Ps

Where solar meets water + a spotlight on Australia where you should only flush the 3Ps

The growth of solar power is a highlight in the UK's green energy transition, although it could be moving faster. What holds up growth?

Just like the sun, solar capacity keeps rising. (via Statista)

Often, it's because of objections from UK locals who don't want anything new covering traditionally green spaces - or sometimes anything new built at all (aka NIMBYs in the US).

Sometimes, the idea of solar panels are attacked as not really all that green in the end. While there is true that there is no 100% sustainable option, wind and solar are still some of the best bets for the future. It's simply not true that they are worse for the environment than, say, burning fossil fuels. This is why progress on making our planet greener will require Debunking the Solar Panel Waste Myth.

Water professionals may face similar debunking with new water-related projects, and they might be able to learn something from this solar power discussion. Public perception of a project is of utmost importance, which is why drainage designers should carefully and scientifically approach projects like determining solar farm field runoff so there will be no objections from an environmental point of view.

Just about every building project needs good drainage design - even solar panel farms.

This was the challenge for Project Centre in a recent project, which has a waterway running alongside the plot of land. They did a smashing job of it with their brand-new software: InfoDrainage. They were long-time Microdrainage customers who had delayed upgrading for many years, but they upgraded right before tackling this project – and came away very impressed with their new software. Read Project Centre: Designing drainage for a solar farm in the UK with strict requirements.

Lastly on the topic of solar + water, you've no doubt heard about the benefits of putting solar panels on top of crops (aka agrivoltaic farming), but what about on top of water? Some countries could meet their total electricity needs from floating solar panels, research shows.

Climate change: should we adjust the scales?

A lot of people rely on the Drought Monitor to assess the groundwater situation, altthough it was never intended to be a climate change indicator, just a real-time assessment of drought conditions. This is a nice article about how scientists and engineers might need to update its methodology as the climate changes: The U.S. Drought Monitor is a critical tool for the arid West. Can it keep up with climate change?

Get your own on-demand Drought Monitor updates.

The same question could be asked about rainfall rates – which is, in fact, a question our own Trevor English recently asked in his post: What is the impact of climate change on stormwater modeling, and how can water professionals prepare? The scales that everyone uses may take time to change, but modelers like those from Amsterdam's Waternet have already updated their rainfall rates to adjust for climate change from 60mm/hour to 70 mm/hour. If you model rainfall, you don't have to wait. You can change the rates you utilize anytime you like: The rainfall and runoff calculation methods inside InfoDrainage and how to customize them.

An infographic we made that appears in Trevor's article.

Capturing water with sand

Do you know about sand dams? They are a simple, low-cost and low-maintenance, replicable rainwater harvesting technology.

It doesn't take a lot to build one – mostly a lot of helping hands. This community of people in Kenya just recently built one, which means they no longer have to spend hours every day transporting water.

Australia sometimes has too much water, in the form of floods, but the bigger trend is the depletion of water over time, which is beginning to come to a head as aquifers get lower and lower, which is leading to a lot of conversation: Perth residents question use of groundwater for Coca-Cola bottled water amid record low rainfall.

In addition to lots of high-level conversation about water conservation, Australia is also starting a new conversation around toilet etiquette.

New Sydney Water initiative: "Only flush the 3Ps"

Have you ever stopped up a toilet at someone's party? Do you lie awake some nights reliving that shameful moment over and over? You're not alone. Sydney Water has a new community outreach campaign, which comes with a commercial for a "Toilet Blocker's Anonymous" group. Their new initiative got some coverage in The Guardian, too: A blocked loo is on you’: surge in ‘fatbergs’ as bizarre items flushed down Sydney’s toilets. You can't not click through. You just gotta know what they found in those toilets, don't you?

Remember at the beginning of The Graduate when the main character gets a key piece of advice after graduating from university? "One word: plastics." Putting all of your money into plastics has gone well for plastic makers but not so well for the world, which is not waving but drowning in plastic – so much so that they are now infiltrating Australia's drinking water.

Considering that we've barely scratched the surface on PFA removal from water, maybe the new advice should be: Put all of your money into water filtration systems. We predict that you'll be seeing more and more stories like this one from St. George: Surge in home tap filtration following water chemicals concern.

Will Australia fix this problem before the dam breaks? 👇 We sure hope so....

The latest from the OWB

The Water Drops don't stop

If you haven’t been following along, over the last year or so we’ve been making a whole lot of Water Drop workflow videos (subscribe to the YouTube playlist) to show our customers smarter and better workflow ideas. This month, Ryan Brown and the team have a fresh batch for you: The Water Drops don’t stop: watershed master plans, even more RTCs, and some smart Python use cases.

We've been travelling

Mahtab Barazandeh went to SWAN 2024 in Vancouver, Youssef Al Fahham went to ASCE EWRI Congress, and this week we had a huge team at ACE 2024 in Anaheim. Trevor English (does this guy ever sleep?) penned the wrap-up post: ACE2024: Solving workforce challenges, implementing AI, and enabling digital transformation.

The product releases keep rolling out

Since our last newsletter, we put out a bunch of new product-specific posts on the One Water Blog:

Finally, we answer a question we hear a lot from prospective customers: Does InfoWorks ICM use the SWMM engine? Yes! Here’s everything else you need to know.

That's it for this go-around. We have a very exciting announcement about our water software in the works, but it will have to wait until next time....

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