Volunteers install a solar water heater, made from recycled materials, with a 90-litre tank on the roof of a modest home in the Argentine municipality of Pilar, 50 km north of Buenos Aires. This unique thermal generation system was designed by Brazilian engineer José Alano, who did not patent it in order to facilitate its free use. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
PILAR, Argentina, Jul 8 2019 (IPS)

“This is the best thing ever invented for the poor,” says Emanuel del Monte, pointing to a tank covered in black tarps protruding from the roof of his house. It forms part of a system built mostly from waste materials, which heats water through solar energy and is improving lives in Argentina.

Thanks to him, hundreds of families in three poor neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the Argentine capital now have hot water for bathing. They used to heat water in pots but had abandoned the practice in recent years because of the high costs of cooking gas.

Del Monte, 32, his wife and five children live in an unpainted cinder-block house with a half-built brick perimeter wall in the neighborhood of Pinazo, Pilar municipality, about 50 km north of Buenos Aires."When they first tell you about it, you don't understand what they're talking about. Then you realize it's an opportunity you can't miss out on because it changes your life.” – Verónica González

Pinazo is a community of about 5,000 people that reflects the social deterioration in the 24 municipalities surrounding Buenos Aires, which together with the capital account for more than 13 million of the country’s 44 million inhabitants.

Neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the capital are home to 130,000 of the 200,000 people who lost their jobs in 2018 in this South American country, where the economy is in a deep crisis and poverty has climbed to 36 percent of the population, according to official figures.

The paved streets of Pinazo are lined with houses with roof tiles and gardens, run-down but clearly middle-class.

But if you turn down the dirt side streets, many of the homes are shacks made of boards, corrugated metal and even pieces of tarp, between empty dirt lots where cats, dogs and chickens wander about.

On some Saturdays, however, things get busy on several of the empty lots: dozens of volunteers, mostly young people, work for hours building solar heaters, together with many local residents.

The volunteers gather early on one side of the freeway from Buenos Aires and come to the neighbourhood together, in cars and trucks loaded with huge bags full of plastic bottles, cans, cardboard boxes, old mattresses and tarps.

Mariana Alio and her husband, Emanuel del Monte, stand in front of their house in Pinazo, a poor neighbourhood in the municipality of Pilar, in Greater Buenos Aires. On the roof they have a solar water heater, covered with mattresses and tarps that keep it warm, which provides them with hot water for bathing – a luxury their family had to do without because of the high cost of the cooking gas they used to heat water in pots. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

In addition, local residents at the site gather useful waste products, which they used to burn or throw into the polluted stream that gives its name to the neighborhood, since there is no garbage collection system.

Convened by the non-governmental organisation Sumando Energías, the volunteers say their goodbyes just before sunset, after building and installing on the roofs of up to four houses solar energy collectors and 90-litre thermal tanks, which keep the water warm because they are covered with mattresses and tarps.

“Each collector is made with 264 plastic bottles, 180 cans and 110 cardboard boxes. Most of the materials we use are reused,” Pablo Castaño, 32, who founded Sumando Energías in 2014, tells IPS as he walks around, supervising the work of the volunteers.

“I am convinced that sustainability is the only way to improve things for the poor. Social and economic solutions go hand in hand with environmental solutions,” says Castaño.

The head of Sumando Energías says he came into contact with the conditions in low-income areas while volunteering for another NGO, Techo (Roofs), dedicated to providing decent housing in slums, and became interested in renewable energy while studying to become an industrial engineer.

Castaño was born and raised in the southern province of Río Negro, near Vaca Muerta, the giant unconventional oil and gas field that the government is counting on to give a boost to Argentina’s declining economy. But he argues that “it is not the burning of fossil fuels that is going to save us.”

The solar collectors consist of 12 parallel two-metre-long PVC tubes covered with cans that absorb heat from the sun and heat the water inside the pipe. They are then wrapped in plastic bottles and cardboard.

Young volunteers from Sumando Energías build solar collectors in the Pinazo neighborhood. The NGO trains them in the development of clean energies that provide social, environmental and economic solutions in poor neighbourhoods in Argentina. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“That’s how we generate the greenhouse effect that keeps the temperature up. The next step is to set up a closed circuit between the pipes and the tank, which is placed on top, as hot water becomes dense and tends to rise. After about 60 round-trip cycles, the water is hot, between 40 and 65 degrees (Celsius),” says Lucía López Alonso, one of the volunteers.

“What is generated is not electricity, but solar thermal energy,” she tells IPS.

Emanuel del Monte’s wife, Mariana Alio, who works at a greengrocer’s, says their family used to heat up water in pots using cooking gas, for bathing, but economic difficulties forced them to only use gas for cooking.

“Some people in the neighbourhood still think I’m crazy when I tell them that I now have hot water from a system built using waste products,” says Del Monte, who recently lost his job as a maintenance worker in Escobar, a municipality near Pilar, and today does odd jobs, mowing lawns or as a handyman.

In both Pilar and Escobar, slums exist side by side with summer homes and gated communities – some of them wealthy and all of them surrounded by walls and fences and protected by private security guards – where slum-dwellers can find casual work.

“(José) Alano didn’t patent it in order for his design to be used freely. We also follow his philosophy and uploaded the solar collector manual to our Facebook page, so anyone can access it,” Castaño explains.

In four years, Sumando Energías has built and installed 174 solar collectors in neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

In the poor neighbourhood of Pinazo, on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, young volunteers cover a 90-litre thermal tank with a layer of foam recycled from old mattresses, which helps keep water heated by a solar collector – also made with old plastic bottles and cans – warm. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Castaño explains that the system for making solar collectors with reused materials was designed in 2002 in Brazil by retired mechanic José Alano, who promoted it in the south of his country.

The activist says the units have a useful life of 10 years or more, but points out that they last longer because they do not have mechanical parts. In addition, the plastic bottles can be easily replaced when they eventually darken and no longer perform their function of maintaining heat.

The aim of the initiative is not only to provide a solution for poor families but also to pass on know-how about renewable energy to the volunteers, who donate 1,500 pesos (about 33 dollars), which are used to cover the cost of the materials.

“We also receive some donations from companies, but we don’t accept any from companies linked to the fossil fuel business,” says Castaño.

Sumando Energías is now working on prototypes of solar cookers that will allow families like those living in the Pinazo neighbourhood, most of whom depend on the informal labour market, to cut their dependence on cooking gas cylinders, which cost 10 dollars to refill.

“Many of us here have had 25-litre electric water heaters, but they tend to burn out because the electric power source is unreliable,” says Verónica González, a 34-year-old local resident who lives with her mother, three daughters and a niece, as she cuts plastic bottles alongside the volunteers.

Her family is among the latest to benefit from the solar heaters designed by Alano. “When they first tell you about it, you don’t understand what they’re talking about. Then you realize it’s an opportunity you can’t miss out on because it changes your life,” she tells IPS.

Model of the Concentración Solar de Potencia de Cerro Dominador plant being built in the northern Chilean region of Antofagasta, which will begin to produce solar thermal energy in 2017. Credit: Abengoa Chile

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Aug 5 2014 (IPS)

With the first solar thermal power plant in Latin America, Chile hopes to begin to alleviate its energy crisis, which threatens to further drive up the high cost of electricity and to hinder the growth of investment, especially in the mining industry.

“We have a structural problem, which is that energy in Chile is very costly, and this not only represents a hurdle for economic growth but also hurts the poor,” government spokesman Álvaro Elizalde told Tierramérica.

This means, he added, “that we have to simultaneously increase the energy supply to bring down prices while promoting non-conventional renewable energy (NCRE) sources.”

The Spanish company Abengoa Solar, which has been operating in Chile since 1987, won the public tender in January to develop a solar tower plant with 110 MW capacity and 17.5 hours of thermal energy storage in molten salt.

The Concentración Solar de Potencia de Cerro Dominador plant, which began to be built in May by the company’s local subsidiary, Abengoa Solar Chile, is to come online in 2017 and will have a useful life of 30 years.

The plant will cost one billion dollars to build, and an additional 750 million dollars will go towards the construction of a photovoltaic solar plant that will double the power generated to 210 MW, spokespersons for the company in Chile told Tierramérica.

Abengoa will receive direct subsidies from the Chilean government and the European Union, as well as financing from the Inter-American Development Bank, the German development bank KFW, the Clean Technology Fund and the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.

The plant is being installed in the municipality of María Elena, in the region of Antofagasta, 1,340 km north of Santiago in the Atacama desert, the most arid part of the planet, where the sun shines year-round.

The first solar thermal power plant in Latin America is being built in the Atacama desert in northern Chile, an area that has one of the highest levels of solar radiation in the world. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

Instead of solar panels, the plant will use 10,600 huge mirrors – heliostats – that span 140 square metres and follow the sun by means of a dual-axis tracking system that will reflect solar rays and heat to a 243-metre tower which will bear a resemblance to Sauron’s tower in the Lord of the Rings movies.

To achieve continuous on demand 24/7 electricity production, the plant will have a thermal energy system designed and developed by the Spanish firm. The heat will be transferred to molten salt, which is used at night to drive 110-MW steam-powered turbines.

The plant will thus offer clean energy 24 hours a day, which is key in Antofagasta, where the constantly growing mining industry already absorbs 90 percent of the power supply in the production of mainly copper."Thermal solar plants are capable of generating and storing energy, and in practice that means they can operate around the clock for most of the year, solely based on energy from the sun.” -- Professor Roberto Román

The company’s spokespersons also say the plant will prevent the emission of 643,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to the emissions of 357,000 vehicles circulating for one year. It should also fully cover the residential sector’s demand for energy in the region.

University of Chile Professor Roberto Román, an expert in NCRE, told Tierramérica that solar thermal energy has several advantages over other NCRE sources, and over photovoltaic systems.

He said thermal solar plants “are capable of generating and storing energy, and in practice, that means they can operate around the clock for most of the year, solely based on energy from the sun.”

In addition, “the power generation from these plants can be combined with other fuels, such as natural gas, to ensure 100 percent accessibility. That means the electricity needed can be generated according to demand, whenever it is needed,” he said.

“If these plants operate only with solar energy they produce zero emissions,” he added, while pointing out that it is a technology that is still being developed “which means there is space for research, development and innovation.

“This is what Spain has been doing over the last 20 years, and what I dream we will be capable of doing ourselves – harnessing the marvelous sunshine that is so abundant. There is enough sunshine here to supply all of Chile several times over,” Román said.

This South American country of 17.6 million people has 18,278 MW of gross installed capacity. Of that total, 74 percent is in the Sistema Interconectado Central (the central grid), 25 percent in the Sistema Interconectado Norte Grande (the northern grid), and the rest in medium-sized grids in the southern regions of Aysén and Magallanes.

Chile imports 97 percent of the fossil fuels that it needs. Hydropower makes up 40 percent of the energy mix, which is dependent on highly polluting fossil fuels that drive thermal power stations, for the rest.

This country’s shortage of energy sources has made the cost of electricity per megawatt/hour (MWh) in Chile one of the highest in Latin America: over 160 dollars, compared to 55 dollars in Peru, 40 in Colombia and 10 in Argentina.
Since she took office again in March, socialist President Michelle Bachelet has reiterated her commitment to developing NCRE sources: wind, geothermal, solar thermal and solar photovoltaic. The government’s target is for 20 percent of the country’s electricity to come from clean energy sources by 2025.

Solar power would appear to be the main focus of energy development in Chile over the next few years, as outlined in the “energy agenda” announced by the president on May 15.

In May, the government approved 43 projects for NCRE development, with the participation of local and international companies, all of them in northern Chile and most of them involving solar photovoltaic power plants.

They would generate a combined total of 2,261 MW a year, which would increase the country’s gross installed capacity by 12.3 percent, when they all come online.

Román cautioned that, in the case of solar thermal energy, “there are still many things that must be worked out, such as how the materials and elements will behave in the aggressive desert climate and how serious and complicated the question of dust and cleaning of the mirrors will be.”

He said this, added to other problems such as water scarcity in the desert, “drive the investment up to two or four times the cost of installing solar photovoltaic plants.”

But, he stressed, solar thermal plants produce “two or three times as much power, which means the real difference in the cost of the energy is not that big.

“Because of all this, I see it as a fantastic option,” Román said. “We should jump on the bandwagon of research and development in this area, with collaboration from other countries of course, and take our place in the field of technological development.”

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes