Water (and Housing) Article

Pragmatist, I Copied your link to give credit where credit is due. Second, thanks for the post.

"The innovative technology devised by Professor Wenbin Wang and his KAUST team captures the wasted heat released by photovoltaic panels and puts it to good use. Solar PV panels have a maximum efficiency of around 20 per cent and the remaining energy is lost through factors like reflectance and conduction efficiency. This energy is mainly lost into the surrounding air as heat.

The new tech is a layered system of water channels, separated by porous water-repellent membranes and heat conduction layers, which are attached to the underside of a commercial PV panel. Three of these distillation channels can enable the device to produce up to 1.64 litres of water per hour for each square metre of solar panel – more than the output of standard one-stage solar stills.

The water production doesn’t affect electrical output and can share the solar panel structure. It can then be used for grass irrigation, allowing for livestock grazing around the cogeneration system, potentially transforming an arid coastal region into a pasture for livestock."

That is what caught my attention. Solar power and water distillation combined in one package. This would open up a whole new landscape for preppers. Thinking back to the video of the Lady who moved into the ghost town in Utah. What would these panels do for her life and survive-ability. Many places in Arizona would now become great off grid locations. Between rain water harvesting and these panels, the desert becomes viable. Even a few years of drought would not be a death sentence.

https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/10/fending-off-disaster/