Tesla speculated electricity from thin air was possible – now the question is whether it will be possible to harness it on the scale needed to power our homes
It won’t (my personal totally empty prediction). To get humidity in larger scale it means getting air flow. Air flow in sufficient numbers doesn’t come out of no where. Usually with this kind of stuff one quickly finds one needs just insane amount of flow to scale meaning big blower fans and then you find you spend all the energy you produce running the fans and other needed ancillary equipment.
It’s possible to use direct mechanical power harvested from renewables to turn the fans, though depending on the effiency it might make more sense to just convert that mechanical power directly into electricity. But, for example, a windmill (as opposed to a wind turbine) could harvest large scale natural air flow and then mechanically leverage that to move humid air at a smaller scale. Same with dams.
It’s possible to use direct mechanical power harvested from renewables to turn the fans, though depending on the effiency it might make more sense to just convert that mechanical power directly into electricity. But, for example, a windmill (as opposed to a wind turbine) could harvest large scale natural air flow and then mechanically leverage that to move humid air at a smaller scale. Same with dams.