Community energy is lighting up remote areas

When the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, Roxana Borda Mamani had to leave Mexico, where she was studying for her degree in rural development and food security, and return to her remote village in the Peruvian Amazon.

- Malleret BRASÍLIA

At the time, the Indigenous community in Alto Mishagua had neither an internet connection nor a reliable energy source. “How am I going to study?” Borda asked. “With energy from the sun,” replied her friend, a fellow member of the Latin American Observatory for Energy Geopolitics at the Brazil-based Federal University of Latin American Integration (Unila).

Borda began researching an off-grid solar energy system. Five years later, her community has a 400W solar system powering a 24-hour satellite internet connection and charging points next to a small school that was set up thanks to the new energy source.

A second phase, to be implemented this year, will equip households with photovoltaic (PV) panels, providing 50 families with regular electricity and ending their reliance on expensive and polluting diesel generators.