Are you interested in being the leading personality behind a multi-billion dollar market. One where the technology is needed in nearly every country in the world and where success can reduce water stress for billions of people world wide?

Our new process can reduce evaporation losses from lakes and reservoirs by chilling the surface of the lake using cold water from deeper in the lake. If the water doesn't evaporate it can be used without reducing the amount of water flowing downstream or the lake level. Government studies have demonstrated that a 1C (1.8F) reduction in surface temperature can reduce evaporation by approximately 2,900 gallons per acre per day. On some lakes it may be feasible to reduce the surface temperature by more than 1C which multiplies the available water saving.

Water horse trading allows cities upstream to pay to reduce evaporation elsewhere in return for rights to remove more water from reservoirs is already occurring on the Colorado. Las Vegas is looking into deals where they pay for desalination plants for cities in California so they can use a portion of that cities allocation of water from the Lake mead. This type of trade will drive an incredible growth and drive deals.

Our approach uses solar power and is as simple as dropping a bunch of self positioning buoys in the lake. No chemicals, No pipe network, No electric bills and precious little maintenance. Preliminary analysis indicates a cost between $100 and $700 per acre foot saved which is far cheaper than trying to replace the water with desalination.

Once validated there are finance companies who will pay to install the system and just charge the government for the water saved. This is a emerging as a favorite way to invest long term capital and means that people receive benefit with no up front government costs. For us this means that once we find a government willing to pay for the water getting the project money is relatively easy.

We need a co-founding CEO for a new company founded to take the technology and process to the next level. This person must arrive with 1 million $ to invest. They must be comfortable building high visibility campaigns for both the public and law makers. They must also be comfortable with multi-billion $ deals and financing those deals. Showing up with the money is non-negotiable. Consider it your first test of being qualified.

I figure we need a very good CEO who understands making sales through public agencies because the largest market will be to government and semi-government agencies.

Quick Market Analysis

Initial analysis indicates that a small reservoir of 1 square kilometer will cost in the range of $2.2 million USD.

The USGS indicates 660,000 sq kilometers of reservoir surface area¹ world wide which provides a maximum market of value of 1.36 trillion USD. The USGS also indicates 1.5 million sq kilometers of freshwater lakes which brings the total world wide market to 4.47 trillion USD. Not all of this freshwater needs or could use our system but even a 0.5% addressable market is worth 22.36 billion USD.

We need to conduct tests to prove the system works as anticipated and to determine the true surface area coverage requirements but costs appear to run between $100 to $600 per acre foot of water saved. This may still be too high for agriculture but can be cheaper than desalination or long distance pipelines such as the California Aqua-duct. The main cost driver is the surface water temperature and the temperature delta between surface water and deeper water in the same reservoir.

1 http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-0058-99/ Magnitude and Significance of carbon burial in lakes, reservoirs and norther peatlands.

Example Opportunity

A interesting example opportunity is in Atlanta where a Federal court case has mandated that Atlanta reduce their water extraction from Lake Lanier to 1970 levels within 3 years. Once this technology proves out, it could deliver about 80 million gallons a day to Atlanta for an investment of about $320 million USD. This would only work if the local and state government could negotiate permission to use the water they help retain in the reservoir. This kind of water trading is already being done so there is ample precedent to allow a upstream city to fund downstream projects as long as the water delivered to downstream users nets out the same.

Incidentally Lake Powell and Lake Mead on the Colorado would also be good candidates. The Las Vegas area is currently spending multiple billion $ for a controversial project to pipe water from surrounding counties so a 300 million investment for infrastructure installed in lake Mead would be a easy decision with the right kind of publicity.

International deployment options may be easier than USA options due to looser regulation but USA deployment can be attractive because the solution also increases the oxygen content of water released from reservoirs.

Some History and Science

Core Science

The core science was done by government studies stretching back into the early 1900's and all my numbers are based on their peer reviewed science. The core of the science is centered around the following areas. It has all been extensively peer reviewed and many modern studies have validated the work done in earlier.

Correlating evaporation rates of large open bodies of water to measured pan evaporation rates.
Correlating evaporation rates to water temperature and the effect of relative humidity, wind speed and air temperature on these rates. We used mid range numbers with 4.2 MPH wind for our estimates. There is a strong correlation between water temperature and evaporation rates that hold a similar curved irrespective of other variables changing however in stronger wind, higher air temperature and lower humidity numbers the loss rates are higher and our benefit will also be higher.
Correlating destratification to reduced surface water temperatures.
Correlating destratification to increased oxygen levels in water below the thermocouple's layer.

Our approach is unique and I believe is more deployable, sustainable and maintainable than other approaches to the same problem. Full destratification has been a well researched area but little work has been done on partial destratification when used purely as a mechanism to reduce surface evaporation.

Deployment Options

Any water body that has a thermocouples layer (over 4 meters deep) are viable candidates. Water bodies with distinct summer versus summer seasons are the best candidates.

Water bodies like Lake Powell, Lake Mead and Lake Lanier which suffer from significant summer stratification are the best candidates because they can deliver a high degree of chilling per unit of pumping invested.

Areas where water shortages are current or looming within 10 years and where developing alternative water sources will cost more than $500 per acre foot are ideal.

Example of USA water bodies which are good candidates.

Lake Lanier 38,000 acres
Lake Mead 157,900 acres.
Lake Powell 162,595 acres
Flaming Gorge 42,000 acres (surface water summer 69F deep water 60F)
Navajo Reservoir 15,610 acres

Summary

This system is complementary separate from but complementary to A2WH since deploying this solution can reduce the amount of water needed from the A2WH system while the A2WH system can produce water in locations where this solution would not work.

This opportunity is time sensitive and the market has an opportunity for rapid growth. The growth opportunity is driven by the ability to deliver the water savings at cost between $100 and $700 per acre foot which is below the cost of replacing the water using desalination. As such it makes sense to form a separate company around this and hire a leading CEO qualified to build the level of exposure needed to make it a success.

We need about 1 million USD to complete the next stage test / proof after which we could start sales to private water body owners. It will reqiore approximately 2 years to build adequate credibility to be taken seriously for public owned water bodies. The smaller private sales would be viewed purely as a mechanism to build the credibility and history needed to close the large sales.

I believe our major hurtle will be reaching the first sale for a medium sized water body after it is proven I think it will rapidly become a best practice for freshwater lakes and reservoirs in the USA.



P.S.  Please blog or publish articles about A2WH, it helps spread the word.


Thanks:


Joe Ellsworth
CTO and principal engineer
206-601-2985 USA 
http://a2wh.com
http://correctenergysolutions.com

Co-Founding CEO needed