TEDx Talk on Solar, Water Collection

I thought the TEDx people had processes in place to weed out preposterous ideas in their talks, but apparently I’m wrong.

If you want to waste seven minutes of your life, do what I just did: watch the first 3/4 of this video on solar and rain water collection, before giving up in despair, which process may make up for the loss you felt about that seven minutes.  Then think through the ideas presented.

During the rainy season, this 300 square foot umbrella collects water, puts it through a filter to remove organic matter (that will be clogged almost instantly). Ignoring that, the water goes into a huge underground cavity that you’ve dug and sealed so that no more organic matter, like microbes, can grow, however that can possibly be arranged. Eventually, you use energy (that has to come from somewhere) to pump the water back out of the pit so it can be used.

To make this practical when the rain isn’t falling, you’ve re-enforced the living bejesus out of the whole structure so that it physically supports enough solar PV to generate, at best, a little more than a KW, which you then “store in batteries.” Where they come from, how much they cost, and how the energy is distributed and discharged isn’t discussed.

I really hate to be so unkind; my rant is more about TEDx (which I generally admire) than about the concept itself.