Five Teams Advance to Final Round of $1.75M Water Abundance XPRIZE

Teams from U.S., India, U.K. and Australia Move Forward in
Competition Aimed at Tackling Global Water Scarcity

LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today, in honor of World Water Day, XPRIZE
– the world’s leader in designing and operating incentive competitions
to solve humanity’s grand challenges – announced the five finalist teams
advancing in the $1.75M
Water Abundance XPRIZE, a two-year competition aimed at tackling
global water scarcity.

Sponsored by Australian Aid and the Tata Group, the Water Abundance
XPRIZE incentivizes teams from around the world to create and develop
pioneering technologies that can extract a minimum of 2,000 liters of
water per day from the atmosphere using 100 percent renewable energy, at
a cost of two cents per liter.

“Water is our lifeblood. With alarming water shortages impacting
livelihood around the world, we are in dire need of decentralized and
democratized water breakthroughs now more than ever,” said Zenia Tata,
vice president of Global Impact Strategy at XPRIZE. “The promising
prototypes presented by these five finalist teams bring us one step
closer towards finding a cost-effective solution for extracting water
from thin air and offering on-demand access to water, anytime and
anywhere.”

The five finalists were chosen based on submissions of technical
documentation, test results, and video of a solution prototype that can
extract water from the atmosphere using any source of energy and without
any requirement for minimum water output cost per liter. The finalists
include startups, professors, professional scientists and engineers. The
five finalists will share a $250,000 milestone prize purse.

The five advancing teams are:

• Hydro
  Harvest Operation (Newcastle, Australia) – Led by the
  University of Newcastle’s Professor Behdad Moghtaderi, the team is
  going back to basics to develop a simple, energy-efficient and
  cost-effective device – giving communities worldwide the ability to
  harvest their own fresh water.
• JMCC
  WING (South Point – Island of Hawaii) – Led by James
  McCanney, M.S., the team is powering the JMCC WING, LLC line of
  industrial Atmospheric Water Generators (AWGs) with the JMCC WING, a
  high efficiency wind energy system, to extract water from the
  atmosphere.
• Skydra
  (Chicago, IL) – Led by Jacques Laramie, Nathan Taylor, and
  Chris Wlezien, the team has employed a hybrid solution that utilizes
  both natural and engineered systems to condense water out of the air.
• Uravu
  (Hyderabad, India) – Led by Swapnil Shrivastav, the team is
  developing a completely off-grid water from air device, spinning
  together the magic of material sciences and solar thermal energy.
• The
  Veragon & ThinAir Partnership (London, United
  Kingdom) – Led by Laura Dean, the team has developed a partnership
  with the key objective of revolutionizing the capability of
  Atmospheric Water Generators to deliver high quality, mineralized
  drinking water at the point of need, in an economically and
  environmentally sustainable manner.

The Water Abundance XPRIZE finalists were chosen from a field of 98
teams by an international and independent judging
panel of seven industry experts in mechanical engineering, water
treatment, ocean energy, strategic design and emerging technologies.
Judges include: Mike Claerhout, RGL Reservoir Management; Nicholas
Davis, World Economic Forum; David Ginley, Ph.D., National Renewable
Energy Laboratory; Eric Hoek, Ph.D., Water Planet; David Ireland, Ph.D.,
ThinkPlace; Purnima Jalihal, Ph.D., National Institute of Ocean
Technology, India; and Matthew Stuber, Ph.D., University of Connecticut
and WaterFX.

The finalists will begin round 2 testing in July 2018 at a location to
be determined. During this phase, teams must fully demonstrate that
their device can extract a minimum of 2,000 liters of water per day from
the atmosphere using 100 percent renewable energy, at a cost of no more
than two cents per liter. At the end of this testing phase, the team
whose solution enables the greatest ability to create decentralized
access to water – giving people the power to access fresh water whenever
and wherever they need it – will receive the Grand Prize of $1.5
million, to be announced in August 2018.

For more information about the competition structure, important dates,
and the finalist
teams please visit water.xprize.org.

About XPRIZE

XPRIZE, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is the global leader in designing and
implementing innovative competition models to solve the world’s grandest
challenges. XPRIZE utilizes a unique combination of gamification,
crowd-sourcing, incentive prize theory, and exponential technologies as
a formula to make 10x (vs. 10%) impact in the grand challenge domains
facing our world. XPRIZE’s philosophy is that—under the right
circumstances— igniting rapid experimentation from a variety of diverse
lenses is the most efficient and effective method to driving exponential
impact and solutions to grand challenges. Active competitions include
the $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE, the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, the $15M
Global Learning XPRIZE, the $10M ANA Avatar XPRIZE, the $7M Shell Ocean
Discovery XPRIZE, the $7M Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPRIZE,
the $5M IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, the $1.75M Water Abundance XPRIZE and the
$1M Anu and Naveen Jain Women’s Safety XPRIZE. For more information,
visit www.xprize.org.

About AUSTRALIAN AID – DFAT – INNOVATIONXCHANGE

In 2015, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s
innovationXchange (iXc) was launched by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to
deliver valuable outcomes for Australia’s aid program through the
testing and piloting of new technologies, methodologies, and
partnerships. The iXc ensures the lessons learned from these approaches
are shared to support current and planned DFAT programs and shape
regional and global forums on development innovation as well as to
support innovative approaches across the department’s work.

About TATA GROUP

Founded by Jamsetji Tata in 1868, the Tata Group is a global enterprise,
headquartered in India, comprising over 100 independent operating
companies. The group operates in more than 100 countries across six
continents, with a mission ‘To improve the quality of life of the
communities they serve globally, through long-term stakeholder value
creation based on Leadership with Trust’. There are 29 publicly-listed
Tata enterprises with a combined market capitalization of about $116
billion (as of March 31, 2016). Tata companies with significant scale
include Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Power,
Tata Chemicals, Tata Global Beverages, Tata Teleservices, Titan, Tata
Communication and Indian Hotels.

For more information, please visit: http://www.tata.com/

Contacts

XPRIZE
Jackie Wei, 310.741.4918
[email protected]