SOURCE Plans Growth From Thousands To Millions Of Drinking Water-Producing Hydropanels Following $130 Million Boost

Sustainability SOURCE Plans Growth From Thousands To Millions Of Drinking Water-Producing Hydropanels Following $130 Million Boost Jeff Kart Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories. Got it! Aug 16, 2022, 03:30pm EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Children in Palawan, Philippines, pour SOURCE water from the tap.

SOURCE Global, PBC SOURCE has a new source of funds, and leaders plan to use the flood of cash to scale up the “world’s first renewable drinking water platform. ” This is more than a dream. The Arizona-based company already has a presence in more than 50 countries and has raised $270 million to date.

The latest influx is via Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Drawdown Fund, who co-led $130 million in Series D equity financing. Other significant participants include Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, Fifth Wall, Blackrock, WIND Ventures, Duke Energy, Harvard Management Co. , Material Impact Partners, Monashee Capital and the Lightsmith Group.

That’s a long list, and SOURCE Founder and CEO Cody A. Friesen has long-range plans. “Today, we manufacture hydropanels at a rate of tens of thousands a year,” Friesen says.

“Our intention over the coming five years is to produce millions of hydropanels a year. This capital is key to the tooling and capacity needed to match that ramp. ” MORE FROM FORBES Solar-Powered SOURCE Hydropanels Can Produce Up To 5 Liters Of Drinking Water Per Day By Jeff Kart MORE FOR YOU Is Carbon Capture Another Fossil Fuel Industry Con? Sustainable Fashion Wants Brands To Redefine Business Growth Trouble With Predicting Future Of Transportation Is That Today Gets In The Way Officially called SOURCE Global PBC (for public benefit corporation), the company uses patented technology, harnessing the power of the sun to draw water vapor out the air and turn it into “fresh, perfectly mineralized drinking water.

” A standard, two-panel array costs about $2,000 and can produce an average of 3-5 liters of clean drinking water per day (or up to 1. 3 gallons, enough for a four- to six-person family), Friesen says. The system works even in remote, low-humidiy locations and can be configured for a variety of uses, from homes to water farms serving communities and businesses.

A hydropanel water farm on Arizona State University’s Polytechnique campus. SOURCE Global, PBC A Global Drinking Water Crisis SOURCE aims to end what it calls a global drinking water crisis, which might sound overly alarming to people used to getting their water from the tap or loading up on bottles at the store. “Globally, 2.

4 billion people don’t have clean water to drink,” says Friesen, citing the World Health Organization . That includes tens millions in the U. S.

The situation is only predicted to get worse with climate change. “Bottled is the accepted answer in times of crisis and for people who want and can spend to get better-tasting, better quality water,” Friesen says, “but it’s unsustainable, unaffordable for many, and has massive costs for the planet. ” MORE FROM FORBES The World Is Getting Better, But There Isn’t Enough Clean Drinking Water By Heather Farmbrough The SOURCE hydropanel system is described as a programmable, distributed, infrastructure-free and fully digitized water solution.

“It works entirely off the grid, requires no outside source of electricity or piped water infrastructure, and produces high-quality drinking water on site and in a variety of climates and conditions,” the company says. “Digital sensors inside the panels and a cloud-based, 24-hour monitoring system create unparalleled insight into the quality and quantity of the water. ” Friesen says SOURCE has learned a great deal since the close of its Series A in May 2015, honing its manufacturing scalability and improving the efficiency of its drinking water production.

Democratizing Water Access Friesen was recently awarded the John P. McNulty Prize in partnership with the Aspen Institute, which celebrates breakthrough leaders who have turned their talents and resources toward dismantling the world’s toughest problems. His company vision is to be the ultimate “democratizer” of drinking water access, using the free and abundant feedstocks of sunlight and air.

Throughout history, he says, water has an extractive resource. Solar power was 10 times more expensive than coal a dozen years ago, but is now the cheapest way to make electricity, Friesen adds. “SOURCE technology takes drinking water from an operating expense to capex expense.

Instead of paying the perpetual financial and environmental costs of extracting, treating and transporting water, there’s one capital investment in technology that creates and delivers drinking water sustainably and with little to no operating expense. “That, and the opportunity to arrive at an ultra-low cost driven by well-understood laws of scale, put us on pace to produce the lowest-delivered-cost potable water on the planet within a decade. ” SOURCE hydropanels were installed at close to 700 sites in the past year, the CEO says.

The projects at work include a 1-acre water farm in Warm Springs, Oregon , that serves 5,000 members of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, and a water farm in Tempe, Arizona, producing 400,000 gallons of premium drinking water a year. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn . Check out my website .

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