Water in the tiny town of Goodooga in north-western New South Wales, comes out of the ground hot. Plenty of people won't drink it - so bottled water and sugary drinks are very popular in the area. But the installation of hydropanels at the school is changing that, producing 50 litres of good quality drinking water a day from the air.
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00:00Like every remote community, Gadooga faces its fair share of challenges, but one significant
00:10hurdle here has been overcome.
00:14Technology has changed the way this school and its community sources its drinking water.
00:21We have a proprietary product called a hydropanel and it is able to harvest water from the atmosphere
00:27and use energy from the sun to convert that into liquid and deliver it straight into a
00:32tap.
00:33The hydropanel technology has been developed in the United States over the past seven or
00:38so years.
00:39It came out of Scottsdale, Arizona where some of the driest, harshest conditions in the
00:45world and scientists there were looking at the abilities of material to absorb water.
00:50So the core technology is actually a material that can passively suck water out of the air.
00:56So we use heat from the sun to create hot air and we use that to increase the dew point.
01:01So we effectively use material and heat to create clean, drinkable water from the air.
01:10It comes out distilled and then we add in calcium and magnesium.
01:13The solar-powered hydropanel system that went in here at Gadooga Central School in 2019
01:20was part of a program supported by the former Liberal government piloting renewable drinking
01:25water technology.
01:27Systems like this one were installed across 10 New South Wales schools.
01:33The 10 panels on this site can provide more than 50 litres of drinking water per day.
01:40This area, not unlike many remote regions, relies on bore water which while drinkable
01:46is not always preferable.
01:48Summer is very hot so we are averaging 40, 42 degrees a day.
01:54If you're not hydrated properly it leads to fatigue, it can lead to sickness and that
02:00can lead to staff not being at school, students not being at school and that's why we really
02:06push to make sure that our students are hydrated.