The Xepultul II photovoltaic (PV) solar power complex built in Guatemala as part of the partnership between Enel Green Power and Barefoot College for rural electrification in Latin America will be opened tomorrow.
Tomorrow the new Xepultul II PV solar complex will be opened, which will provide electricity to three villages in Guatemala. The solar panels were installed between 17-24 January by the ingenieras solares trained as part of thepartnership between Enel Green Power and the Barefoot College. Electricity will be supplied to 12 public areas of the three comunidades involved in the project (four for each village): meeting places, schools, rooms in the town hall, the temple or the church.
This is the most recent achievement of a cooperative project involving EGP and the Barefoot College which aims for the electrification of villages in Guatemala, Peru, Chile, El Salvador and Colombia. The partnership has already led to the installation of 1,030 solar panels – 725 in Peru and Chile and 305 in Guatemala and El Salvador – meeting the electricity needs of more than 2,000 households.
The programme has led to 24 women from Chile, Peru, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama and Colombia being trained in India to equip their villages with solar kits. The Barefoot approach is to identify women who are between 35 and 50 years of age and often semi-illiterate to follow a training programme that will turn them into Barefoot Solar Engineers (BSE).
This training uses gestures, sounds and colours to enable effective communication between people who speak different languages. At the end of their training, these women will return to their villages, where they will carry out their activity while also training other women and exporting the model to nearby villages.
The programme targets grandmothers because they are rooted to their area and they have a smaller family burden than young mothers.