Earth’s surface is covered by 71 percent water. What’s ironic is that about a quarter of the global population does not have regular access to clean drinkable water.
Some say that finding a solution to the global water crisis should be humanity’s top priority. For this to happen, it means finding a way of turning salty seawater into clean, drinkable water.
A small Kenyan town, Kiunga, located near the Somali border, has made significant steps towards achieving this goal.
The NGO (non-government organization) known as GivePower are the driving force behind the new project. Resident’s lives in the small Kenyan have already been positively impacted by the new development.
Due to the continued success of the new solar water treatment, GivePower is planning to bring its program to other parts of World that are in need.
Reports published by UNICEF and the World Health Organization state that one in three people do not have access to regular, clean, drinking water.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the area that has been hit the most with the water crisis making it the ideal location to install the first solar water system.
The system has now been successfully operational since mid 2018 and is continually turning saltwater from the Indian Ocean into drinkable water.
Next on the list for GivePower are Haiti and Colombia, following the terrific success of the plant in Kenya.
Desalination can often be a very expensive task due to the vast amounts of power required to carry out the process. Therefore, it’s only really possible in areas that have the resources to not only produce but also distribute all the energy required.
GivePower’s innovative new technology tackled this issue head on through what they call “solar water farms”. These farms produce around 50 kW of energy stored in high-performance Tesla batteries along with 2 water pumps that operate 24/7, 365 days a year.
GivePower provides clean drinking water to approximately 35,000 people per day with consumers stating that the water quality is far superior than water from traditional desalination plants.
GivePower’s technology is also a lot greener than other desalination methods. In a typical plant, salt extract and pollutants can be harmful byproducts of the desalination process which can in turn harm plants and animals.
Before the solar farms existed, the people of Kiunga, Kenya had to walk for over an hour in order to collect water – and often the water was dirty, bacteria ridden or completely dried up. The residents would have to collect water from a well in the same channel used by animals for bathing.
It is estimated that by the year 2025, over half of the Earth’s population will be living in areas facing extreme drinking water shortage.
Projects like GivePower are of utmost importance seeing as only 2.5% of the worlds’s water is freshwater. This number continues to fall due to rising temperatures and increased ice and glacial melt.
GivePower are now crowdfunding to construct more solar water farms in other areas that have been severely affected by drought. The organization has also started to install its solar panels in over 2,500 schools, businesses, and emergency services in 17 different countries. What a truly remarkable project!
