Peruvian villages go solar
Students and faculty from an American University work with indigenous Peruvians to electrify their village and improve their quality of life. The remote village of Malvas in the Andes seems typical of many in Peru. The 500 Inca descendants have no electricity, no running water, one telephone and mud adobe houses. At a 10,000-foot (3,048 m) altitude, residents survive through subsistence farming. And this project might sound like a typical solar system installation--a system is donated, consultants install it, no one owns it and if something goes wrong, no one fixes it. The equipment ultimately helps no one and few learn from the experience. But two aspects of this project make it unique - the unusual level of communal sharing in the town and the design and installation of the solar system by students.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Massachusetts, Lowell, MA (US)
- OSTI ID:
- 20006006
- Journal Information:
- Solar Today, Vol. 13, Issue 6; Other Information: PBD: Nov-Dec 1999; ISSN 1042-0630
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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