How many litres of water does it collect per kilowatt hour of energy generated by the solar panels? This device isn't the first of its kind nor is the concept original. These kinds of devices tend to fail because they're very inefficient so the real innovation would be making one that is practical. Unfortunately, the author chose to gloss this over.

Works just like Uncle Lars's Moisture Vaporator in that Galaxy far, far away! That was invented for a movie in 1976, why did it take 40 years for someone to come up with the equivalent idea?

Global warming I guess. Climate change is forcing the innovative to innovate! With dry parts of the earth getting drier, and massive population booms expected, ideas that in the past would have been considered not worthy of pursuing, or too costly to do so, now in the face of global warming are looking much more necessary and attractive.

Yeah, necessity is always a good motivation. But I'm glad they are doing it. It sounds like a good idea once they can overcome the start up problems. Hope they can really implement it on a large scale!

I just great to see that an idea that I first saw in Star Wars 40 years ago is now coming to life. Wondering if they were inspired by it.

So the first Moisture Vaporators finally made it down to earth from that galaxy far, far away.

http://starwars.wikia.com/w...

More often than not, great/practical ideas never got off the ground due to high start-up cost or local governments don't have the foresight to capitalise on those ideas. Hence they never get implemented into large scale practical use. Shame, really.