![]() ![]() When we go to a WPA, we’re right there alongside, displacing those incumbents. Often that involves - it could be bottled water, filtered water, boiled water, or trucking water in. One is, everywhere in the world, there’s an incumbent cost of drinking water. VentureBeat: Does this complete the way you would want to get to full distribution of what you do?įriesen: There are two things. Now they have arrays at the schools to provide water on an ongoing basis. They had converted a whole classroom into bottled water storage so that when parents dropped off their children, they could pick up their flat of bottled water and take it home, because there’s no water. When you think about how many hundreds or even thousands of schools you have there that don’t have steady water supplies - they use rainwater tanks. We’ll be doing a large WPA in Australia at schools. VentureBeat: Is there a percentage of a city’s water supply these arrays can provide?įriesen: So far the work we’ve been doing is in hospitality communities, resorts, sustainable bottled water companies, an indigenous-owned company in Australia. That thickness is really incorporating the reservoir that stores 30 liters of water and a number of other elements that provide for function. We’ve been installing on roofs for a long time. VentureBeat: Would that be a little heavy for a roof? Does it work on normal residential construction?įriesen: Absolutely. If you have an array on your roof, let’s say on the south-facing facet, you can then put this on the east-facing facet, if you have enough space, or you can go in the same array alongside solar. Now we’re enabling people to just buy water in the one case, and providing a product that’s dialed in to go alongside solar on homes. One is around technological innovation and one is around financial innovation. It’s two very different, but very innovative, elements of the progress at Zero Mass Water. We’re doing a lot of those going forward. We have what are effectively WPAs, water purchase agreements, which have enabled us to install large arrays in Dubai, Australia, and so on. ![]() Just like in solar, when the invention of the PPA came along, the power purchase agreement - that enabled people to buy electricity rather than solar panels. The other thing we’re announcing is Source Fields. As you can see, it’s a much more elegant - we call it the 8-bit design, like Max Headroom. It’s optimized for rooftop and residential. It produces the same amount of water as the previous version. ![]() It’s the same size as a residential solar module. One is Source Rexi, which as you can see is about half the size. It’s been quite a bit of progress this year. I don’t remember the number from the last time we sat down, but it was probably 18 or 20. ![]() I read about lots of deployment in Dubai and other places.Ĭody Friesen: It’s been a busy year. VentureBeat: It looks like you’re moving right ahead. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. In places like Dubai and Australia, cities are purchasing large amounts of Source Field water. Friesen said in an interview it has deployed multiple Source Fields, or large-scale hydropanel arrays that create an ongoing supply of water for communities and businesses. The company is also introducing its new “water-as-a-service” business model. It is easier to install, and can produce more water on a daily basis. The company launched its Source Rexi Hydropanel, which can be put on a roof and is half the size of the previous version. I interviewed Friesen last week at CES 2020, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas last week. It is a way of using the resources that are already in abundance around us - the water that exists in our air.Īnd now Zero Mass Water is scaling it up. Zero Mass Water’s Source Hydropanels require no electrical input, pipes, or public utility infrastructure. It comes at a time when Australia is in flames and Syria’s ghastly civil war was caused in large measure by a severe drought. The technology is like something out of Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel Dune, and Friesen created a startup dubbed Zero Mass Water to make it real. ![]()
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