-June 9,2022-
At one time Allensworth in southern Tulare County sat at the edge of Tulare Lake and enjoyed springs of artesian well water. A bright future was envisioned for this African American community. But that never happened. Then in 1966, the State of California discovered high levels of arsenic in the drinking water. Most residents left but 34 families remained, leaving Allensworth all but a ghost town.Now like other land around Corcoran, farmland around Allensworth is sinking from overpumping of groundwater by farmers in the region.
pictured: panels produce water
Lack of clean water has affected the future here. It will be 106f this week in town and everything is drying up.
Now an Arizona company wants to build a “water farm” that could provide clean drinking water pulled from the air.
The severity of the drought has pushed Californians to experiment with all kinds of new technology to make new runs at the problem from fog catcher walls to small offshore desal units the size of a large buoy and now hydropanels that work like solar panels but generate water – not electricity.
The company – Source Global – has applied to the Tulare County Planning Commission for a special use permit to erect 640 hydro panels near Allensworth on land owned by John Hancock Life Insurance Company.
Expected to be approved June 8, the applicant says it will provide farmworkers with both drinking water and ice paid for by an employer. An anticipated 200-350 farm laborers will benefit from the water production. The 1.6 acre site is located at Road 80 and Avenue 16, Earlimart, CA 93219, near Allensworth.
Source Global’s hydropanels create water out of thin air and bring it where it’s most needed.
Source says it is powered by an integral combination of solar photovoltaics and high efficiency solar thermal. The electrical and thermal power is used to efficiently produce water in a modified psychrometric cycle even in some of the driest deserts in the world.
The company claims it has hydropanels installed in 52 countries in 450 separate projects. According to CNBC, the company has raised $150 million from investors including Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, BlackRock, Duke Energy and the Lightsmith Group.
CNBC says Source Global’s hydropanels create water out of thin air and bring it where it’s most needed. CEO Cody Friesen invented the panels in 2014 at Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, where he’s on the faculty. A year later, he turned the science into Source Global. The start-up’s panels cost about $2,000 a piece.
“We take sunlight and air and we can produce perfect drinking water essentially anywhere on the planet,” Friesen said. “And so we take water that has historically been probably humanity’s greatest challenge and turn it into a renewable resource that is perfect essentially everywhere.”
This type of technology is desperately needed in places like India, where an estimated 800,000 villages don’t have clean drinking water. Friesen cited the World Health Organization, showing that by 2025 “half the world’s population will be in water-stressed areas.”