The Spanish Company, Gran Solar, the Guatemalan Green Group and the Swiss investment fund Ecosolar have inaugurated the first solar power plant in Guatemala, which has a generating capacity of 50 kilowatts.
The plant, installed in the town of Estanzuela, in the eastern department of Zacapa, at a cost of $14 million, is benefiting more than 24,000 residences and is the most powerful photovoltaic plant in Central America.
Guatemalan President, Otto Perez Molina, who attended the inauguration, described the project as “historic” and said that through these endeavors, “the economy will continue to grow to help many families who are in poverty today.”
“We’re moving towards renewable energy and the government’s willingness to continue to promote these projects that are friendly to the environment,” he said.
The president stressed that the project was done in a record time of four months (January to April).
The project, called “Sibo”, the first with this technology in the country, was developed in an area of almost 14 hectares of land on with 20,320 photovoltaic panels and 15 engines for power generation were installed.
The Green Group’s engineer, Sebastián García-Prendergast, told reporters that the topography and Zacapa temperature (above 30 degrees Celsius) were the optimal conditions for installing the plant to help to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.