Cody Friesen founded Source Global in 2015 to get clean water where it’s needed most. Source hydroelectric panels have been installed in more than 50 countries (>400 different projects).
Investors include Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Blackrock and Duke Energy.
They are like solar panels, but instead of electricity they produce water.
Source Global’s hydroelectric panels create water from nothing and deliver it where it’s needed most. Its CEO, Cody Friesen, invented the panels in 2014 at the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, where he is on the faculty.
A year later, he turned science into Source Global. The startup’s panels cost around $2,000 each.
We take sunlight and air and can produce perfect drinking water anywhere on the planet. We’re taking water, which has always been humanity’s greatest challenge, and turning it into the perfect renewable resource everywhere.
Cody Friesen.
Source hydroelectric panels take water vapor from the air and condition it in a form 10,000 times more concentrated than in the atmosphere. Using the sun’s heat, the system converts the molecules into liquid water, which is collected in a reservoir inside the panel and then released as pure water.
In 2018, Friesen had installed a series of 40 hydroelectric panels in Kenya, where members of the Samburu Girls’ Foundation faced daily dangers as they traveled to find water. Now they have their own water source.
Now we can produce perfect water, in your home, in your school, in your community in a way that truly brings it into the 21st century.
Cody Friesen.
In Colombia, in collaboration with Conservation International, they have transformed the community of Bahía Hondita with the installation of a plant of 149 hydroelectric panels to generate water extracted from the air using solar energy.
In Saudi Arabia, Red Sea Development Company will commission the world’s largest desalination plant powered by solar and wind power, powered by SOURCE.
This kind of technology is desperately needed in places like India, where an estimated 800,000 villages lack clean drinking water. Friesen quoted the World Health Organization as saying that in 2025 “half of the world’s population will live in areas with water problems“.
There is also a domestic need. According to Friesen, in the United States there are 1.5 million miles of lead pipes still buried and about 750 water main breaks a day. The business opportunity is huge.
More information: source.co