SOURCE Hydropanel Renewable Drinking Water

Climate change is increasing water scarcity across many regions of the world. Over 2 billion people around the globe live in water-stressed communities.  These numbers are expected to be exacerbated in many regions as a result of climate change and population growth [1]. At current rates of progress, we are not on track to reach the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goal SDG 6.1: universal and equitable access to safely managed and affordable drinking water for all. The world will only reach 81% coverage by 2030, leaving 1.6 billion people without safely managed services [2]. The overwhelming majority of those without safe drinking water are found in low-density areas that are not well served by centralized infrastructure - in particular rural households, islands, and villages.   

Reliable access to clean drinking water has been magnified by a changing climate, a growing population, and an over-reliance on centralized urban infrastructure solutions. Water use has grown at more than twice the rate of the population in the last century. At current rates, global demand for freshwater is on track to exceed supply by 40% in 2030. By 2050, more than half the world’s population will face water stress as a result of climate change.  

Contaminated water is also linked to health impacts and disease transmission. Lack of or poorly managed water exposes people to avoidable health risks. According to the World Health Organization, diarrheal disease is the second leading cause of death in children under five and kills an estimated 450,000 children under five each year [3]. An improved water source can reduce the physical effort and time spent collecting water, allowing greater productivity and personal safety. This can also decrease musculoskeletal disorders from long journeys to collect and clean water. Better water sources lead to lower healthcare expenses, improved health, and increased economic productivity. Access to improved water sources also benefits children's health, school attendance, and long-term outcomes. 

SOURCES:  

[1] World Health Organization, 2023: https://www.who.int/news-room/....  

[2] A safely managed drinking water service is defined as one located on premises, available when needed and free from contamination. It is calculated using a linear regression model by the Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) of the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF). Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene 2000-2020: five years into the SDGs. Geneva: World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 2021: https://data.unicef.org/resour....  

[3] WHO Diarroeal Disease Fact Sheet, 2024: https://www.who.int/news-room/....  

SOURCE Global has pioneered a groundbreaking solution to the world's water crisis with its renewable, off-grid drinking water system powered by solar energy. This innovative technology extracts clean, safe drinking water from the constantly replenishable water vapor in the air, offering a sustainable alternative to traditional water sources.  

SOURCE Hydropanels are powered by an integral combination of solar photovoltaics and high-efficiency solar thermal technology. The electrical and thermal power efficiently produces safe drinking water in a modified psychrometric cycle, even in some of the most dry, arid locations on the planet. 

Hydropanel technology uses no electricity, produces water in low humidity, and ensures water quality meets international standards. Unlike other systems that rely on scarce water resources or are costly to maintain, Hydropanels require minimal upkeep, making them ideal for remote locations. The panels are rated to withstand extreme weather, ensuring a continuous water supply. SOURCE's self-sustaining system, drawing only H20 molecules from the air, also eliminates the need for treatment or filtration.  

SOURCE Hydropanels provide a contaminant-free alternative to communities relying on vulnerable water sources, such as boreholes and rivers, addressing environmental, health, and socio-economic concerns. Compared with Reverse Osmosis, desalination, and other technologies, SOURCE is cost-effective and sustainable, offering better quality water without plastic bottles or transporting water long distances. Low maintenance and ease of operation make Hydropanels an ideal solution for rural communities, injecting value into local economies and offering an inherently scalable, climate-resilient water system.

What is SOURCE? (youtube.com) 

A Public Benefit Corporation, SOURCE Global is on a mission to make drinking water an unlimited resource, putting the power of safe, sustainable drinking water in the hands of every person while reducing the carbon emissions from trucking/hauling water from place to place. SOURCE Hydropanels are allowing communities around the world to become more resilient and better prepare for extreme weather.  

In particular, Pacific Island Countries (PICs) face a huge challenge accessing reliable and clean water. Almost half of the population (approximately 5 million people) across the PICs are without access to basic drinking water – the lowest per capita region in the world. In the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the increasing impacts of extreme weather patterns, such as El Niño, and unpredictable disasters can quickly endanger limited drinking water supplies, as in recent volcanic eruptions which contaminated rainwater and surface water resources. There are 43 islands in FSM where approximately 24,000 people living in 5,300 households are without safe and reliable drinking water.

Despite the efforts of the Pohnpei Utilities Corporation (PUC) and Kosrae Utilities Authority (KUA) to expand water service access across the many island archipelagos, remote low-population density islands do not have resilient water services such as piped water networks or any longer-term solutions due to the challenges of engineering and high costs of infrastructure to span large distances. Households resort to “Self-Supply” strategies and school-aged children must bring water from home to attend school. This water is largely sourced from rainwater harvesting and surface water gathering. Furthermore, the quality of that water is not suitable for consumption without further treatment or risk of waterborne illness. All of the current solutions present challenges, including the high cost and carbon footprint of trucked and boat-delivered water, the increasing instances of surface, and well water supplies running dry or becoming contaminated. Communities in FSM deserve a long-term solution and the government is committed to finding innovative technologies that can help overcome some of the challenging landscapes of decentralized island populations.

A Hydropanel solution in partnership with the Pohnpei Education District will provide these small island communities with a year-round supply of high-quality water directly within the most water-challenged schools. This will in turn reduce healthcare costs associated with diarrheal disease and parasitic infections and improve low student attendance and school closures. Hydropanels also provide a direct, calculable reduction in Green House Gas Emissions by substituting onsite, solar-powered water production for plastic water bottling, transportation of bottled water over long distances, and fossil fuel-powered water extraction and purification in large treatment plants.

In addition to health and environmental impacts, SOURCE Hydropanels can directly impact economic development, creating job opportunities and skills development in the green energy space around the installation and maintenance of Hydropanel systems. Hydropanels are also expected to yield significant cost savings to the users over the productive lifespan of the product (20 years), compared to boiling collected water and shipping bottled or bulk water to remote islands.

What sets SOURCE apart is not just our technology, but our commitment to collaboration. Partnering with governments, NGOs, and local communities, we ensure that our solutions are tailored to the specific needs and contexts of the regions we serve.

Cody Friesen, Founder & CEO

An MIT trained materials scientist, Cody has worked in the renewable energy space for over two decades. The confluence of his personal experience growing up in the Sonoran desert and feeling first-hand the challenges of water-scarce communities and his background in renewable energy led him to look at how we solve the water crisis in a different way. 

We have a proven track record of partnering with and training local water authorities in water-scarce locations that have mandates to serve all customers in their catchment areas. These agencies have the responsibility to provide water to even the most difficult-to-serve communities but lack the innovative technologies to be able to do so more affordably and effectively.

For example, in Papua New Guinea, in partnership with TWM and the Roku Water Committee, we installed 40 Hydropanels at a local community church where 130 households with 700 residents can more easily access clean drinking water. This community had previously relied on rainwater collection during the short rainy season and trucked and bottled water that is not always clean or available. In this partnership model, the local women-run Water Committee is responsible for the sale of water and maintenance of the equipment. Through partnership with SOURCE, they are developing their business skills and are incorporating into a professional licensed entity to further improve the business model and sustainability of this project.

We currently have piloted projects in Papua New Guinea and have begun to install new projects in Tonga and Vanuatu in collaboration with governments and with philanthropic support. We are gathering data on costs and benefits that we believe will make the case for further investment in the Hydropanel solution in other Pacific Island Countries.

In partnership with the Navajo Department of Water Resources, we have deployed Hydropanels across the rural, isolated homes that make up the Navajo community, bringing clean water at home to 1,796 residents of the Navajo community for the first time. These households previously did not have running water, spent an average of 82 minutes per week to buy bottled or trucked water, and spent an average of $80/month on bottled water and fuel costs to purchase water. Through this project, SOURCE Hydropanels offset an estimated 1,835,512 half liter plastic PET bottles per year.

We have made continuous improvements in our product engineering and manufacturing processes that will allow us to more rapidly and effectively disseminate this solution in the most water-challenged communities around the world. 

We have raised investor capital and we are at the scaling stage seeking a commercially viable product for the ever-growing challenge of water access.

According to the United Nations, progress towards achieving SDG 6 (Water and Sanitation) is critically off track. In terms of access to clean drinking water alone, achieving universal coverage by 2030 will require an increase of 5 to 8 times the current rate.[1] There is a serious shortfall and chronic delay in the deployment of financing and implementation of water infrastructure solutions that reach remote, marginalized populations.

As a Solver, SOURCE Global could scale and leverage partnerships and support in product distribution, monitoring and evaluation, and public relations and business strategy to deliver solutions to the last-mile more rapidly and more cost-effectively than alternative technology and engineering solutions: 

• Partnerships: With support from governments, community partners, and the private sector, we are looking to expand our Hydropanel reach to the hardest-to-reach communities, and doing so at scale will help reduce the costs and exponentially drive water access impact in low-income, water-scarce communities around the world. Partnership is critical for our path to scale and is also fundamental for achieving the SDGs, as represented in SDG 17.
• Monitoring and Evaluation: Solve’s advising and tools would allow us to build upon the existing evidence base and gather evidence on the links between access to off-grid, climate-resilient, safely managed drinking water and economic prosperity, and other social indicators at the household and community levels (i.e. increased time for productive activities; education; efficiency of water resource use; workforce productivity). We expect this will help us to dimension the higher value of safely managed drinking water equity outcomes in access to higher quality water at the household level and ultimately inspire governments and others to invest in SOURCE and other innovative solutions.
• Visibility: Awareness is needed for heightened investment and adoption of SOURCE Hydropanels. Participation in Solve’s award-winning platform and the Solve Community is invaluable as an opportunity to spread the word across domestic and global stakeholder groups.  

SOURCE:

[1] United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2023: Goal 6 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs (un.org).

Solar Atmospheric Water Harvesting (SAWH) technologies such as the SOURCE Hydropanel are distinctly different from legacy “Atmospheric Water Generation” (AWG) methods, which inefficiently covert power grid energy into water and do not function in arid, low-humidity environments. Most AWGs rely on cooling condensation, requiring ambient conditions with high relative humidity (RH) and temperature.

Two core parts of SOURCE intellectual property include material science and solar thermal technology. We use an advanced material to passively adsorb water from air – similar to the way sugar clumps when you leave the lid off a bowl. We also capture energy from the sun to create solar thermal energy (hot air) – not an electric process – and use that to condense in the same way that hot steam in a shower condenses on a wall.

These two concepts are key differentiators between SOURCE and AWG or HVAC units. AWG and HVAC are energy-intensive, direct condensation processes that work when humidity is above 75%. SOURCE technology requires zero power and is highly efficient, meaning our materials adsorb water even in environments sub 10% humidity.

Unique Advantages:

-     Off-grid & Renewable: Arrays provide a self-sustaining supply of water without extracting finite groundwater or energy resources.

-     Economic: SOURCE water is a low-cost, climate friendly alternative to purchasing bottled or trucked water deliveries.

-     Efficient: Hydropanels uniquely produce water in a wide range of conditions including in very arid environments where RH can drop below 10%.

-     Quality: Water produced by Hydropanels begins pure, similar to distilled water, and mineralized with calcium and magnesium for an optimized taste profile.

Growing and scaling SOURCE water as a commercially viable solution will serve as a demonstration model in the philanthropy-dependent WASH sector, while accelerating government and private donor investment in locally, safely managed water for marginalized communities.

Theory of Change supporting SOURCE Solution:

If the government of the Federated States of Micronesia invests in climate resilient water infrastructure to make clean drinking water accessible to remote communities, they will be equipped to reduce the effects of climate change on low-income, last mile communities, and unlock substantial health, economic and time-savings benefits.

Evidence: Water infrastructure is responsible for 54% of all global climate adaptation costs, more than all other sectors combined. These costs originate from hazard protection that can reduce risks from floods, sea level rise, storm surge events, and other climate impacts. 

The first step is communities adopting SOURCE as a sustainable, climate-resilient, low-cost alternative to providing a decentralized solution at scale in remote island communities.

1st Intermediary Outcome: If communities switch to a climate-resilient source of safely managed drinking water, then residents of last mile communities will have increased resilience to climate change, improved health, increased economic productivity, and reduced environmental impacts.

Evidence: Previous studies show that improved water services can free up time for productive activities, education and recreation, and improve health outcomes. Studies on the economic value of WASH have found that the majority of the value comes from increased economic opportunities. On average, having a piped water source saves a household 1-2 hours a day in water collection, increasing opportunities for income, education, childcare, and building social capital. Improved water services also provide economic opportunities by averting productivity losses from illness. [1]

As a second step, our theory of change is conditional on the population adopting the technology and switching to SOURCE water to meet their drinking water needs.

2nd Intermediary Outcome: If the Pohnpei Education District deploys SOURCE Hydropanels to reach remote and rural communities most affected by climate change and people perceive the improvements in SOURCE water quality to be greater than the costs; then the targeted communities will switch to a high quality, environmentally renewable supply of drinking water that is sustainably managed.

Evidence: SOURCE projects in other parts of the world have demonstrated that our target populations will switch to SOURCE water because of convenience, taste, cost, and lighter environmental impact/reduction of plastic. According to an evaluation of the Aboriginal Housing Office Hydropanel Program in Australia, 800 SOURCE Hydropanels installed on homes in remote drought-affected communities led the majority to report improvements in their health and well-being attributable to the availability of clean, reliable drinking water.

SOURCE:

[1] Vivid Economics & WaterAid, Mission Critical: Invest in water, sanitation and hygiene for a healthy and green economic recovery, 2021.

At SOURCE, we are committed to democratizing water and making it as intrinsic as the air we breathe, regardless of who you are or where you live.

To achieve this vision, we aim to create impact through the following goals and measure progress with associated indicators:

1. Access to safely managed water:

The long-term target population for our innovation is the estimated 2 billion people globally who do not have access to safely managed water.

2.  Reduce diarrheal disease in children by 45%: 

According to the WHO/UNICEF monitoring report, access to safely managed water can reduce diarrheal disease by 45%, and diarrheal morbidity by 30% (from 2.90% to 2.03%). [1]

3.  Averted healthcare expenditures: 

Reduced diarrheal disease is linked to averted healthcare expenditures. Diarrheal disease in childhood is linked to poor health outcomes later in life, with ongoing healthcare expenditures.

4. Opportunity cost: 

Safely managed drinking water on site will save women and girls around 1 hour per day in water collection, increasing their opportunities for productive activities, education, and building social capital. Poor services mean that women and girls, in particular, miss out on school or opportunities to earn their own income because they bear more of the burden of unpaid care and collecting water.

5. Environmental impacts: 

Over its lifetime, a single Hydropanel can offset more than 50,000 single-use plastic bottles, or 4.5 tons of CO2 in its 15-20 year lifetime. This is based on the assumption that SOURCE water is mainly replacing plastic bottled water. In addition, e-accessing, cleaning, transporting and distribution--has significant energy costs. Hydropanel CO2 reductions are based on the offset of these energy expenses:  

• Energetic and CO2 payback is less than 3 months vs. bottled water
• Industrial Material Mass Offset occurs within 6 months 

More than 91% of Hydropanel materials are mass bulk-recyclable.

SOURCE:

[1] Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene 2000-2020: five years into the SDGs. Geneva: World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 2021.

Hydropanels use solar energy to power fans that draw in air and push it through water-absorbing material. This process passively turns water vapor into drinking water that is mineralized for health and taste and kept clean in a storage tank until it is needed.

The device uses solar-powered fans to draw air inside, where water vapor is adsorbed onto a proprietary hygroscopic material—a desiccant engineered at the nanoscale to maximize its ability to attract water without compromising its ability to release the water that collects on its surface. Heat captured by the device’s solar thermal panels increases the vapor pressure of the water, causing the hygroscopic material to release it. This raises the specific humidity of the water vapor inside the device, elevating the dew point above the ambient temperature so there is no need to chill the vapor to get it to condense—even in arid environments.

Solar-powered sensors help optimize the Hydropanel’s performance by measuring the ambient air temperature, solar intensity, and relative humidity, feeding that data into an algorithm that dynamically controls the rate at which fans draw air into the device. Solar-powered wireless transmitters also send live data to a cloud database, allowing SOURCE to monitor all installed panels.

Moisture Harvesting Process Summary:

- Ambient air is drawn into SOURCE and water vapor in the air adsorbs onto advanced hygroscopic materials

- Solar thermal power desorbs water from the hygroscopic materials into amplified water vapor cycling within the Hydropanel resulting in liquid water formation, flowing into the internal reservoir

- The collected pure water is mineralized for optimal health and taste, and the reservoir is actively provided with ozonation for water cleanliness

- Water pumps from the onboard reservoir through a polishing cartridge and to a dispenser

- Each Hydropanel connects to a cloud-based network and is monitored for performance and quality

The stored water is 100% recirculated once per day, ozonated to a minimum of .25 ppm, and passed through a UV filter of at least 40mJ/cm2. The filtration and storage systems actively monitor flow rate, pH, TDS, and UV levels for 100% diagnostic control of pumps, ozone, UV, mineralization injections, disinfection dosing quantity, and water levels. Finally, the drinking water is sent through UV filters when pumped and dispensed for consumption.

SOURCE is a well-tested and established technology. Evidence of the technology can be seen around the U.S. and multiple sites across the globe where SOURCE has installed Hydropanels. We have R&D facilities in Arizona where we test and modify Hydropanels to improve output and decrease size and cost. 

SOURCE has obtained National Sanitary Foundation (NSF) certifications (P343) for its Hydropanel systems and meets all National Primary and Secondary Drinking Water Standards. Additionally, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) evaluations have historically been expeditious as SOURCE Hydropanel systems do not require power, water connections, or extensive ground disturbance.

https://www.source.co/how-hydropanels-work/

Patents: https://www.source.co/patents/

SOURCE Global has a staff of close to 300 currently. This includes full and part-time staff. In addition, we employ contractors in-country to do installations and to provide ongoing maintenance.

Cody Friesen grew up in the Arizona desert, where running out of water with 10 more miles to hike makes the necessity of drinking water very real, very quickly. He has spent time in Indonesia and Central America where meters of rain fall, and yet there is no clean water for drinking. This pushed him to pursue an education at MIT in materials science and led him to a career in the renewable energy space over 2 decades. He founded SOURCE Global in 2014 and developed the Hydropanel that we have been developing and improving for the last 10 years.

SOURCE has adopted cultural pillars that are the building blocks of all the work we do. They are: 1. Lead with Love, 2. Think Zero Mass, 3. Build Aggressively for Divergence, 4. Demand Yes, if/Reject No, because, 5. Work Toward Wellness, 6. Innovate for Sustainability, and 7. Act as a Team, deliver as an Individual.

In addition, SOURCE also adheres to Equal Employment Opportunity Principles in our hiring and supports a Women at SOURCE Leadership Circle. Throughout all levels of the organization, we look for people who ask “why?” and come up with “how”.  

We take pride in working with and for the most marginalized communities and have a mission to make water accessible for remote, rural, indigenous people.

We have two principal business models: Direct Sales (Capex) and Water Purchase Agreement (WPA). Direct sales of SOURCE Hydropanels are through supplier agreements, where the Hydropanel arrays are paid for in an upfront capital expenditure, and provide all the water generated by the Hydropanel arrays to end-users at no cost, or for a nominal charge to cover the ongoing costs of consumable replacements.

The second model is a WPA. Similar to power purchase agreements, WPAs charge customers a fixed price per liter that is generated over the length of a 5-15 year contract, with no down payment or capital costs upfront. Hydropanel arrays are sized to meet the volume needed and built, operated, and maintained by SOURCE at no cost to the customer.

Access to blended finance is important to the ability to scale in places where government counterparts cannot afford the Capex cost of the technology or contract a long-term lease. In these cases, a combination of grants and financing are sought to be able to deploy the technology and sell that water at a subsidized price.

Achieving universal safely managed water supplies could yield $37B/year globally, preventing billions of cases of waterborne diseases in addition to the accompanying health and opportunity costs. [1] We believe that engaging water utilities and governments responsible for serving their citizens will be crucial for reaching scale. Through expanded pilots and comprehensive cost-effectiveness analyses, we want to further understand the business parameters and challenges for the wide-scale adoption of SOURCE technology to deliver drinking water to the hardest-to-reach, unserved markets around the globe.

SOURCE:

[1] Vivid Economics & WaterAid, Mission Critical: Invest in water, sanitation and hygiene for a healthy and green economic recovery, 2021.

We have secured previous grant and contract funding (e.g. USAID, Microsoft) and raised investor capital and we are now at the scaling stage, seeking a commercially viable product for the ever-growing challenge of water access.

Hydropanels can currently produce water at as low as $0.10/liter. We expect a drop of more than 50% in 3-5 years with efficiencies in technology and manufacturing. Climate-resilient water infrastructure can provide up to 21 times more value than upfront investment costs with lower maintenance expenses. [1]

Compared to the status quo (traditional infrastructure), a single WPA can deploy technology across a large area of low-density population - for example a single WPA can provide household drinking water to 10 islands, 100 villages or 1,000 schools at the point of consumption, which makes it dramatically cheaper than the extension of traditional centralized infrastructure. The potential of this model is access and scale, with a regional financing opportunity to rapidly enable long-term, resilient access to drinking water to households in the same way that renewable microgrids have done for electricity access and cell phone towers have done for information access.  

SOURCE:

[1] Vivid Economics & WaterAid, Mission Critical: Invest in water, sanitation and hygiene for a healthy and green economic recovery, 2021.