Pacific Gas and Electric pumped-storage hydroelectric project

Slocum's proposal — combined pumped-water storage and reverse-osmosis desalinization for regions where ocean meets mountain. Used to introduce Slocum's upcoming guest lecture; positions complex multi-system engineering design.

On Tuesday I will lecture and finish up my part, and on Wednesday Professor Slocum will come in. He apologized — he thought classes were at ten o'clock, but there was a miscommunication. He's going to talk about his combined pumped water and desalinization idea. In certain parts of the world where you have an ocean next to a mountain, you could do pumped water storage on the side of the mountain, and then the high pressure of the water could go through a reverse osmosis process. You get both desalinization — low-salt water for a population, easily for a couple of million people — and energy conversion combined. He's looked at the different areas of the world where this can occur and done some of the engineering analysis. It's a new proposal, he just came up with it this summer, so it's a complex problem. It's a way to combine energy conversion and water desalinization for tremendous savings. I wanted him to come in because I consider him one of the three brightest people I've ever met, all of whom I met at MIT.