Plenty International

Belize - Toledo Solar Energy Demonstration

by Thomas Heikkala

At the Plenty Board meeting last December of 2000, Johnny Weiss and Ed Eaton from Solar Energy International (SEI) discussed ways to integrate Renewable Energy (RE) into some of Plenty’s projects in Belize.

We decided that the Mayan farmers of the Toledo Cacao Growers Association (TCGA) have the most immediate and pressing needs along with being, as an organization, well prepared to integrate a new technology. They have 172 member farmers, live in rural environments, have large families with children attending school, and virtually no electric power. They get their light mainly from crude and potentially dangerous kerosene lamps. Some families use an automobile battery to power a radio.

As the Mayans have few vehicles, when the battery needs to be recharged it must be carried to someone who has electricity and a battery charger. The farmers have requested assistance with the problem of watering their crops during the dry season.The Plenty Board and SEI decided that we needed to send Ed and myself back to Toledo to do some solar power demonstrations and talk more with members of the TCGA.

Within a couple of days of arriving in January we met with a large group of the TCGA farmers who happened to be in Punta Gorda (PG) for the first marketing of their cacao this year. We spoke to our contacts from last October: Pablo Cal (now the chairman of the TCGA), and Chris Nesbit (TCGA liaison to Green and Black, the British company that buys the cacao) about our solar demonstrations. Pablo invited us to address the men and women who were busy sorting and bagging their cacao. Auxibio Sho translated what was said into the Mayan Mopan language. Auxibio is a 25-year-old farmer who was picked as the Belize Young Farmer of the Year in 1998. He works for the Ministry of Agriculture to bring support and extension services to the farmers of southern Belize.

We set the dates for two demonstrations and we agreed to pay for a midday meal for everyone who attended. The first demonstration would be on a Sunday at Pablo’s farm in San Antonio and the other would be the following Tuesday at Auxibio Sho’s parents’ farm near San Jose village.

Auxibio Sho (right, in hat) translates Ed's words into Mopan Maya at San Jose. (photo by Scott Harlow)

Ed Eaton demonstrates the “pump-in-a-bucket” at Pablo Cal’s farm outside San Antonio. (photo by Scott Harlow)

During the following week we spent most of our time collecting the solar equipment for the demonstrations. We had arranged to borrow three 75 watt photovoltaic panels, a 30 amp charge controller with meters, a large deep cycle 12 volt battery, and a 30 watt florescent light. Ed had brought three water pumps: a submersible pump, a surface pressure pump with a small pressure tank, and another small submersible pump that would be used for a pump-in-a-bucket demonstration. We also purchased an assortment of hardware, wire, and PVC water pipe.

During that same week the Plenty Belize Program Coordinator, Melanie Reimer, Ed, and I met with Dr. Ludwig Palacio. Dr. Palacio is a veterinarian and the director of a new vocational school called The Center for Employment Training-Toledo (CET) attached to the high school. He is very interested in having the students learn about Renewable Energy, so we agreed to do a demonstration for the electrical class.

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As the dates for the demonstrations got closer we were starting to think that we wouldn’t have any sunshine. It had been cloudy and rainy for ten days so we figured we would have to use already charged batteries. The panels would show some voltage on a meter even through the clouds.

Saturday night before our first demonstration it rained hard most of the night. We drove through the foggy morning to Pablo Cal’s farm and by the time we were set up and folks were arriving the fog had lifted to a sunny/partly cloudy day. There were 23 local Mayan farmers and seven gringos including us. A table and blackboard were set up in a clearing where Pablo dries and ferments his cacao, and Ed described the basics of photovoltaic and battery systems. He explained how our demonstration system would operate, then put us to work setting it up so folks could get their hands on the equipment. We ran a hundred feet of number 10-romex wire from the solar panel in the clearing to the small spring pool where Pablo gets his home use water. The men then dry connected thirty 20-foot lengths of one inch PVC pipe up the trail past the red and ripening annatto trees to Pablo’s house. The run was supposed to be 600 feet including 120 feet of climb to get there. It didn’t reach on the first try so the pipe was disconnected and rerouted more directly through the jungle.

With the pump whirring and the sun going in and out from behind the clouds, we were soon getting a gallon per minute into a tub.

A little later the 30-watt light was demonstrated as well as a surface pressure pump attached to a drip irrigation line with emitters that released water at a rate of a half a gallon an hour. Everyone seemed to be impressed with the potential for greater use and efficiency.

Much discussion continued during the lunch of rice, chicken, and fresh squeezed orange juice from their orchard that was made by Pablo’s wife, Modesta, and the other women in the family.

We left in the early afternoon satisfied that the demonstration had been a success.

On Monday morning we traveled out to the crossroads to do a two-hour presentation for the electrical class at the new Center for Employment Training—Toledo. Mrs. Eleanor Cohuoj, the Electrical Instructor, met us and brought her class together in the open-air building that had very recently been wired by the class. At the CET, the vocational training classes last for ten months, and the students are prepared for full-time employment. Although the school had only been open for two weeks there were already 60 students on board. There were about 30 students attending our class, mostly young men ranging in age from 15 to 24 years. After Ed’s talk about photovoltaics and its uses the students all huddled around him to see how a solar panel is hooked up to a water pump.

The small pump was submersed in a 5-gallon bucket of water where it merrily pumped water through a clear hose and back into the bucket. The 30-watt light was also demonstrated as the students kept Ed busy answering their questions. The upshot of this event is that the CET would like to add Renewable Energy to their courses, including solar cooking and food drying for their agro-processing students. We agreed to continue our relationship with the school and SEI is going to send them some of their textbooks.

On Tuesday we held our final demo at Auxibio Sho’s parents’ farm near the village of San Jose. Sixty-four farmers showed up. Adjacent to the farm in the jungle is an underground stream running about 15-feet below the surface and accessible through an opening in the ground. The stream runs year round.

We again demonstrated how a pump and pressure tank system could be used to irrigate their field utilizing the drip irrigation method to conserve water during the dry season.

The next steps are to design a project or projects in consultation with the TCGA and other Toledo partners and interested parties such as CET staff, and then prepare proposals seeking funding to set up a three to five-year program with the following goals:

To help meet the farming families’ needs for safe lighting and water.
To assist the creation a locally owned small support business or businesses with fully trained technicians.
To get to where the local people have the knowledge and expertise to set up, improve and maintain renewable energy systems.

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