Solar-Powered Desalination Plant in Kiunga Provides Locals 25,000 Liters Drinking Water/Day

Aug 07, 2019 by Gaurav Sood in Energy

The freshwater crisis is a burning issue that the world needs to address before it’s too late. Water scarce regions in parts of Africa, China and India are already dealing with this problem. People in such parts have to walk an average of 3.7 miles each day to get water for daily chores. This results in women and children having to sideline education to suffice their survival needs.

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It is estimated that by 2025 half of the world population will be hit by the water crisis. The only viable solution is to use saltwater of the oceans and turn it into drinkable freshwater. The technology has been around for quite some time, but it is too expensive to implement for practical use.

In continuation of this effort, GivePower, a non-profit organization has come-up with a solar-powered desalination plant in Kenya off the coast of Kiunga. Initially opened in July 2018, the plant now creates 75,000 liters of fresh drinking water which satiates the need of 25,000 local people.

It cost around $500,000 to construct the solar-powered facility in Kingua and they hope to bring this cost down to $100,000 in the future. Along with contribution from corporate and private donations, a grant of $250,000 from Bank of America helped bring this project to life.

The estimated revenue from this plant is going to be around $100,000 per annum. That money is going to be put back into developing more such facilities in water-scarce regions of the world.

To access the system people use M-Pesa payment app, wherein they only have to pay a fourth of a cent to get one-liter water. That’s a nominal amount of money the locals have to pay to get drinking water and already the facility is making a significant contribution to people’s lives.

Apparently, GivePower is a non-profit branch of SolarCity (Elon Musk’s failed solar company) which was merged with Tesla in 2016. After the merger, GivePower spun off as an independent organization under the leadership of Hayes Barnard.

According to Hayes;

With our background in off-grid clean energy, GivePower can immediately help by deploying solar water farm solutions to save lives in areas throughout the world that suffer from prolonged water scarcity.