What's the point here? Is electricity even the bottleneck of water desalination? I thought the biggest issue with these plans is the brine. That is the major pollutant, and no amount of solar panels will solve that.
> Unlike some desalination systems, there is no accumulation of salt or concentrated brines to be disposed of. In a free-floating configuration, any salt that accumulates during the day would simply be carried back out at night through the wicking material and back into the seawater, according to the researchers.
The only difference with this example is its small scale. Once it is scaled up it will have the same problem as any existing desalinating plant.
So basically you're admitting you don't know anything about the subject, but you're making a conclusion anyway. It's OK to admit you don't know enough about a subject, and it's OK to not comment or theorize based on no knowledge besides an imagination.
That man's name? Albert Einstein.
It is a very odd sensation to "swim" in the dead sea. Even floating is pretty hard because you are so buoyant. It's probably the closes to true weightlessness I will ever get.
The only answer is to pipe the brine into areas with strong currents, or dilute it by distributing it over a very large area.
Power can be a constraint, too. It depends on how much power you have available or can pay for, how much fresh water you need and how pure, how much you can buffer, etc. In short, power/cost is a constraint sometimes.
It's a bit like slingshotting a space probe past venus. Technically to move Venus a bit closer to the sun, but not enough to make a difference.