| If it all works this would be useful. (Contary to all the negative comments about how pointless this is.) Not a water expert, but here's where this reported price ranks from some googling: Tap water in California: $.0005 / liter [1]
XPrize winner: $.02 / liter
Water truck delivery in CA: $.01 - $.05 / liter [2]
Desalination: $.05 - $.30 / liter [3]
Wholesale bottled water: $.30 / liter [4]
Walmart bottled water: $.68 / liter [5]
If $.02/liter is right, this is close to the water truck in pricing. Also it seems like you could ship this with solar
to disaster areas instead of flats and flats of bottled water and be up to 15 times cheaper. It could be an alternative to desalinization near the ocean where there is lots of humidity at 2 to 15 times expense. This seems useful.Tap water is awesome, btw. It's 100 times cheaper than all these options. [1] $.002 per gallon from https://www.wsj.com/articles/my-california-water-is-an-undil... [2] $200 for 5000 gallons to $500 for 2500 gallons for water truck delivery in California https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/08/californias-four-year-drough... [3] https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-a-water-desalination-pla... [4] $1.22 per gallon from https://slate.com/business/2013/07/cost-of-bottled-water-vs-... [5] $.02 per fl oz from https://www.walmart.com/tp/bottled-water |
Not everywhere has tap water. Some places don't have an aquifer suitable for drilling a well. Other places don't even have a road network suitable for the delivery of water by truck in an economical manner (or at all).
Beyond that, drawing water from the air has benefit in that it does not negatively impact a local aquifer which might already be over-drawn. What is the additional economic benefit per liter of that? That could be subtracted from the $0.02 / liter cost if you care to look at more than just the immediate bottom line.