Clean water is a huge concern in the world. Many places do not have clean water that is accessible and available. There are places with access to salt water, but not clean drinking water. Fortunately, there are people all over the world looking into solutions to these problems and one group, called GivePower is using solar panels placed on built structures to create clean water.
The process of removing the salt from water to make it drinkable, fresh water is called desalination. In Kiunga, Kenya, GivePower has built the first microgrid desalination system which are powered by solar panels on the top of large shipping containers. These solar panels create electricity to run the desalination process.
On the designboom website, they report that “according to the world health organization, 844 million people across the globe lack access to clean drinking water and among them are more than 300,000 children who die every year due to water-born diseases. 2 billion people currently live in water-scarce regions and as many as 3.5 billion could experience water scarcity by 2025.”
These kinds of statistics should encourage designers, scientists, architects, and builders to create more of these types of projects to help people to get access to much needed water.