Tackling water shortages with the ‘Star Wars’ tech

One development which has helped the adoption of such water systems is the move to digital payments.

Headquartered in Italy, Veragon has water production units across the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and South America.

“When we originally started with off-grid communities, it was a cash-based society which wasn’t really viable… nowadays it’s being digitalised,” says Veragon global business director Stephen White.

“For example, the majority of Cambodia is covered by 4G and Covid saw an explosion of e-wallets. There’s much better private infrastructure and partnership – the government doesn’t have to be involved, and we sell water at much lower price.”

He says all units will be moved to digital in the next few months.

However, the prices of the units is not cheap. Veragon says its units, which use the cooling and condensing system, cost between $60,000 and $70,000.

Meanwhile, Ms Koigi says a large unit of theirs costs $18,000.

But Mr Shrivastav points that making water in situ has a cost advantage as water is quite heavy and not easy to transport around.