Solar Wind Energy Tower, Inc. (OTCMKTS:SWET) Crashes Post Conference Call

The last few market sessions have been anything but rosy for Solar Wind Energy Tower, Inc. (OTCMKTS:SWET). The company’s share price dropped about 47% over three consecutive sessions, losing a third in Friday trading alone.

The 32% slip on Friday came in the wake of the company’s announced conference call that took place on May 8. The call was intended to shed light on the many questions SWET reportedly received following the string of big announcements the company made recently. Those include a land purchase agreement with the City Council of San Luis, Arizona and the financing negotiations with National Standard Finance LLC for the construction of a downdraft tower.

The call explained some of the basic operating principles of the project but didn’t offer a lot of new information that was not already available in press releases and filings. Traders are likely waiting for more specific information about the conditional agreement with National Standard to finance the project.

There was, however, one very specific detail that slipped through the Q&A part of the call. Answering a question, SWET CEO Mr. Ron Pickett mentioned that the tower will need about 8000 acre feet of water on an annual basis. This is not exactly a volume unit that people use every day, so we converted this into US gallons. The result was about 2,600,000,000 (2.6 billion) gallons of water per year, for a project located in Arizona.

Just to put things into perspective, with 1 acre foot of water being the average annual usage of a household of five, and assuming water conservation in southwestern states such as Arizona, this means the tower may use more water than the entire town of San Luis. We’ll stop with the numbers, leaving further calculations of water costs to someone who has more experience with how exactly water unit rates change with increased consumption.

Until further details are made available about the exact terms of the National Standard financing and the final announcement of a definitive agreement, SWET‘s price may go through further wild swings, especially given the dramatic, steep climb that the news releases triggered. SWET is currently another 14% down in early trading.