Renewable technology that produces drinking water from the air has changed how an isolated school and its community source water.
A hydropanel system installed at the tiny Goodooga Central School in the north-west of New South Wales near the Queensland border produces up to 50 litres of drinking water daily.
Source spokesperson Rob Bartrop said the panels’ material had the ability to “passively suck water out of the air”.
“We use heat from the sun to create hot air and we use that to increase the dew point; so we effectively use material and heat to create clean, drinkable water from the air,” he said.
“It comes out distilled and then we add in calcium and magnesium so that it tastes great.”
Principal Malcolm Banks and Rob Bartrop say the hydropanels have sparked a positive change in Goodooga. (ABC News: Courtney Wilson)
The system was developed in the harsh desert environment of Arizona in the United States.
The former NSW Liberal government trialled the system at 10 remote schools as part of a program examining remote renewable drinking water technology.
It is estimated that the program prevented half a million plastic drink bottles from being used and provided good quality drinking water to 1,500 people in some of the country’s most remote and vulnerable communities.
“You’ve got remote Australia, particularly Indigenous Australia and rural Australia, still reliant on either no service and having tanks and bores,” Mr Bartrop said.
Before the solar-powered hydropanel system was installed at Goodooga Central School in 2019, it and the town relied on bore water for drinking.
The panels were first set up at Goodooga Central School in 2019. (ABC News: Courtney Wilson)
Replacing plastic bottles
Goodooga Central School principal Malcolm Banks said some people in the community wouldn’t drink the bore water and relied on bottled water.
“The bore water comes out of the bore extremely hot and then is treated and also cooled down with the cooling tower up at the bore baths,” he said.
Mr Banks said the hydropanel system sparked positive change at his school.
“Staff use it, students use it,” he said.
“They’re there two or three times a day filling up their water bottles out of that system.”
The children love filling up their water bottles from the system. (ABC News: Courtney Wilson)
A collaboration with the company Zip in 2022 saw a chiller added to the system, which increased uptake.
“Summer is very hot. We are averaging 40, 42 degrees a day,” Mr Banks said.
“If you’re not hydrated properly, it leads to fatigue, it can lead to sickness, and that can lead to staff not being at school, students not being at school.”
The chilled water bubblers also helped the school’s efforts to reduce students’ consumption of sugary drinks, which studies found was more common in places with reduced access to good quality drinking water.
“We can’t stop it, but we discourage it,” Mr Banks said.
Dozens of schools in NSW still rely on bottled water. (ABC News: Courtney Wilson)
Others in need
The state’s Department of Education said 36 public schools relied on bottled water.
Other schools also temporarily receive water deliveries when normal supply is interrupted, while others elect to receive bottled water “due to the taste or convenience”.
Mr Bartrop said, at times, well over 100 schools received water supplies paid for either by governments, families or community groups.
“There’s a longer list, more like 200 schools, which when droughts come when water gets more and more scarce, we see the quality of regional and remote towns really suffer first,” he said.
“We see much higher consumption of bottled water, we see more cost, more plastic waste, and actually just a bigger gap to everyday life than what we see for people who grow up in urban areas.”
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The 10-hydropanel system at Goodooga cost about $50,000 to purchase and install and was predicted to last at least 15 years.
“In terms of the lifetime cost of producing water using the system at Goodooga, that figure is around $0.10 to $0.15 per litre,” Mr Bartrop said.
“So you’re looking at 1/20th of what bottled water costs and yet, much higher cost than what tap water costs in Sydney.”
After the renewable drinking water technology pilot program ended in 2022, Zip and Rural Aid funded the expansion and maintenance of the system as a long-term solution for Goodooga.
The NSW Department of Education said: “Based on the current findings, the department is recommending alternatives to the solutions trialled to provide secure water supplies to schools.”
Mr Bartrop said governments needed to rethink the “all or nothing” approach.
“Water is still very much in the Roman era, where it’s about finding clean water and getting it to cities,” he said.
“In cities, you get as much great water as you want for basically for free, and if you can’t reach that standard, you’re not served at all and you get nothing.
“We’ve got to think of new ways to find water, like the atmosphere, and new ways to deliver it, in this case like leapfrogging infrastructure and actually delivering it at the point of demand.”
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