Project: Solar for South America

Lunch with Pedro

2008-07-16T15:02:36Z

I've just had lunch with Pedro of the Avina Foundation to discuss plans for our South America solar programme. Avina is our key partner in South America and does work across the continent on a wide range of issues.

Pedro comes over to Europe every few months to drum up support for South America. I arrange for him to meet several foundations to see how they could help. We hope to have our first volunteer in South America in the coming months once we've raised enough funding to support the project - so please do chip in if you can.

Solar demo

2008-07-03T12:37:53Z

Here's a picture of Raul, our Avina counter-part in Argentina, demonstrating a solar panel to indigenous people. Raul was showing them how a small 1 watt solar panel can directly power a radio, which is fantastic for them as many of them spend weeks with their animals in very isolated areas with no means of communications.

Plans for our project in South America are gathering pace, although we still need more funds in order to recruit a volunteer and send him or her there for a few months to get things off the ground.

Winter in South America

2008-06-04T14:26:36Z

It's winter again in South America and the temperature is dropping in southern Argentina, particularly at night. There's a real problem with heating again, particularly among the indigenous communities in the rural areas. Children such as the one in the photo below tend to suffer the most from the cold.

That's why we're going to be doing some solar thermal, using the heat from the sun to generate heat in-doors as well as hot water. When we were there last year, the temperates dropped to -16 degrees at night. We were staying in unheated hostels in the plateaus and we were freezing cold - a solar heating system would have worked wonders.

If you'd like to donate to this work, please do click on the 'support this project' button on the right and fill in your donation details.

A wind powered system

2008-05-21T17:55:14Z

A number of you have asked us whether we're also interested in other forms of renewable energy. While our main focus is definitely on solar power, we are of course very interested in using other sources of renewable energy if these are appropriate to the local environment.

For instance, Patagonia, in southern Argentina, has lots of wind. That's why we're interested in hybrid solar and wind systems. Below is a photo of a prototype wind turbine developed by our partners in Patagonia:

It's housed in a small workshop at the back of the nuclear reactor site in Bariloche. That's because the head of our partner organisation there used to be the chief scientist of the nuclear reactor before he moved into social enterprise and renewable energy many years ago. Since then, he's harnessed the support of the other nuclear engineers and workshops to help with his new renewable energy projects. Excellent!

Plans for microsolar in Southern Argentina

2008-05-03T21:36:50Z

We've been developing plans for a microsolar programme in Southern Argentina. It's extremely exciting stuff. Patagonia is known for its amazing scenery, but few people realise that there is lots of poverty in the region. Access to electricity is also limited in the rural areas.

So we're teaming up with Gustavo Gennuso, a social entrepreneur who is very active in Bariloche in Patagonia. He already runs a network of schools and appropriate technology projects and is the former Chief Scientist of the nuclear reactor in Bariloche. He's now a specialist in renewable energy and gets volunteer assistance from engineers who still work at the nuclear reactor. That's pretty cool!

Our plan is to work with Gustavo to train disadvantaged youth to build and sell microsolar products, such as solar lanterns, solar radios and solar chargers for mobile phones.

Would you like to support this? Then click on the 'support this project' button and donate now!

Meet Rosario

2008-04-24T16:21:30Z

In 1995, Rosario Andrada de Quispe and eight other women set up the organisation Warmi Sayajsunqo, which means 'persistent women' in the local language. Warmi's objective is to help the local indigenous people live in the Puna region with dignity and according to the Kolla culture.

They focused in particular on a microbusiness approach and founded the Kolla Bank, which is managed by more than 70 indigenous communities. The bank now serves more than 3,000 families, which use the bank's microloans to fund their microenterprises.

We're very impressed by Rosario and Warmi's work. They know how to run sustainable enterprises, which is why we want to work with them to help them set up their solar microbusinesses.

Please support us. We need your donations to help us set up this programme. £15 would allow us to produce a solar lantern, while £300 would allow us carry out a day's training for a group of indigenous people.

Testing a solar panel

2008-04-15T13:44:11Z

Testing a solar panel in San Salvador de Jujuy, northern Argentina. August 2007

Resorting to candles

2008-04-02T16:36:42Z

According to indigenous leaders in northern Argentina, the price of kerosene is going up so high that rural households are resorting to making candles out of animal fat and donkey droppings, as in the photo below. The light emitted is pretty poor and doesn't last long, which is another reason why SolarAid's microsolar work is so urgently needed. Please donate to this project!

A local leader showing the inefficiency and dim light emitted from handmade candles (made out of animal fat and donkey dropping) in San Salvador de Jujuy, northern Argentina.

Our fundraising is underway

2008-03-28T13:11:33Z

It's been a busy week here in London. It's been wonderful to have Pedro, Ricardo and German from the Avina Foundation visiting us. As you'll remember, the Avina Foundation are a leading South American organisation and they are helping us set up our solar programme in the region.

So we went to Cardiff in Wales on Tuesday to meet Peter Davies, Vice Chair (Wales) of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, and John Pontin from the Converging World, an excellent organisation that is driving ahead with wind power for developing countries with a pioneering model of contraction and convergence.

We also had a meeting with a new foundation based in Wales that funds projects tackling climate change and poverty around the world. We'll be applying to them for some initial funding to help us get the project going.

However, it's unlikely we will manage to get all the funding we need from trusts and foundations, which is why your help is so urgently needed. So please click on the 'support' button and donate!

Bolivia

2008-03-03T18:19:54Z

We're now back in the UK and trying to raise funds for this South America solar project. It's really exciting to be doing all this work. However, we really do need the funds urgently in order to start a pilot project in Argentina very soon.

Just £20,000 would allow us to do the pilot project while we try to raise the funds for the whole programme. With that £20,000 we could pay for a volunteer solar engineer from the UK to spend six months with Warmi in order to start training them, buy a first lot of solar materials, start setting up the systems and identify the best places for solar installations for when we start scaling up the programme. The photo above is of a solar system on a home in rural Bolivia - a place the electricity grid will never reach. So please give!

Nick

Border Crossing Bureaucracy

2008-03-03T18:19:11Z

Yesterday we had a 12-hour drive from Argentina to Bolivia, with a three hour stop at the border. It was an eye-opener: while just about everyone else was walking straight through, Raul, who has been guiding us through this trip, had to get a dozen forms signed and stamped, visit half a dozen border offices, get photocopies, get them stamped again, visit another office, wait in line for ages, etc, etc. As he explained to us, the border guards were asking for money 'for beer and food', but each time he refused, so they kept on making him go through the bureaucratic process.

But we got through in the end and then drove hundreds of miles through Bolivia's poorest region: scattered mud and brick huts, mad dogs running after our 4x4 as we drove through small villages, across deserted plains and through rocky valleys, leaving swirling clouds of brown dust behind us. As Raul frequently pointed out, there is a huge need here for solar energy as most communities we came across had no access to electricity.

John

Solar Ideas

2008-03-03T18:16:56Z

So we met with Rosario and members of the communities yesterday. They love the micro solar idea, but they also want solar thermal to heat water and solar cooking - so two new areas to explore.

They're very entrepreneurial and highly organized, so it should be no problem setting up a micro solar business here. When I asked Rosario how many solar chargers she thought they could sell, she instantly replied 'around 20,000 to 40,000, because each family will want several and because we can sell to other areas too'.

They also want larger systems and we've been discussing helping them set up a solar business here that would sell such systems. The only solar companies are in Buenos Aires and they have no interest in this region, so one option could be for us to help Warme set up a solar company that would sell and install solar systems on homes, schools, medical centres, etc.

The promising element is that the government is legally obliged to provide electricity to everyone in the country, even those with no grid access. Hence the government may pay for all solar systems installed - a direct subsidy for any solar company that Warme sets up.

So that's it for now. Better go as we're about to have a meeting with 160 leaders of local communities to discuss all the above.

The sun's now shining brighter outside - it's going to be another very sunny day!

Solar regards,
John

Perfect solar weather

2008-03-03T18:14:36Z

The Highlands
Monday we flew up to Jujuy, right in the north of Argentina, where we were greeted by Raul, an anthropologist who works with the Avina Foundation, the organization that invited us here. We drove a few hours up into the Quebrada de Humahuaca, a broad gorge of stratified vividly coloured rock, with pretty towns and oasis villages - a region recently made a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

On Tuesday we drove further up into the highlands, up to 4,000m, across stunning near-desert plains where a few stray lamas graze and dotted with the occasional adobe huts that are typical of the region.

The weather here is perfect for solar. They have 6-10 days of overcast sky a year. The rest of the time, it's a perfect blue, with not a cloud in site. Raul (see photo above) told us that this is because of micro-climatic conditions caused by different air masses and winds surrounding the region. In winter, they have 6-8 hours of strong sunlight a day; in summer it can be up to 12 hours.

Nick

Meeting the indigenous leaders

2008-02-23T18:18:13Z

Greetings SolarAiders,

It's 6am in a very kitsch hotel in Potosi, Bolivia. Everything is purple and bright yellow with statues of Indian elephants and other exotic creatures. We arrived late last night to find our hotel hadn't kept our reservation, so ensued a desperate run around Potosi's hotels with Raul, our counterpart from Fundación Avina, until we found the last two rooms left in the town.

I've been awake since 5am - a mix of left-over jetlag and the effects of altitude. Indeed, altitude has an odd influence on the body. Just brushing my teeth last night left me out of breath, as though I'd just run 10k.

Meeting 80 Leaders
Since our last blog post we had our meeting with the leaders of the communities in Abra Pampa. Eighty turned up from across the region, many of them women dressed in bright traditional clothes - evidence of recent moves to empower women in local decision-making. We presented our work to them and quizzed them about their energy needs and this was followed by a very good discussion. It all works by consensus here; nothing happens unless everyone is happy with it. By the end of it, they were all asking, 'so when do we start?' The agreement is that we'll aim to begin with micro solar and then look into the bigger systems.

Nick

Meeting the local NGO

2008-02-21T18:15:55Z

Warme
Raul is a great. His knowledge of the area, where he's lived most of his life, is impressive. He completed his PhD a couple of years ago: he studied an organisation called WARME SAYAJSUNUQO, which means 'persevering women'. Warme was started in the mid-1990s by a woman called Rosario to help all the indigenous communities join together for development. Today, it's a huge success and runs micro-credit banks, handicrafts workshops, three gold mining companies using sustainable mining techniques, an internet café, an entrepreneurs training centre for indigenous people, an eco-tourism project funded by the InterAmerican Development Bank, and a host of other initiatives.

Warme is run by the communities for the communities. Indigenous people in Argentina have been oppressed for centuries and they're just starting to rediscover their identity. Warme is at the heart of a revolution in this area.

Warme covers 12 districts over an area of around 40,000 square kilometres (each district is roughly 3,000-4,000 square kilometers). 100 communities (each of about 40-50 families) live in the area so in all around 25,000 people are part of Warme.

Many villages have limited access to the grid and in any case most families spend much of their time away from the village in the wilderness. They usually have two or three huts scattered in these remote areas, which they stay in when they tend their herds of lamas. These huts have no electricity and so they rely on the usual candles and kerosene lamps, with the usual health and environmental consequences.

Nick