When we installed our solar lighting systems in the Andes, we saw that we weren’t the first to visit the Q’eros with solar solutions. We saw two schools that had fairly large solar systems installed. Unfortunately, one of them didn’t work and the other wasn’t being used to its potential.
1st Village
This was about a 4 hour trek at 5,000m from the nearest 4 wheel drive track so it was no simple feat to get two 100+ Watt panels mounted on the school’s roof. Unfortunately, they didn’t use any charge controllers or deep cycle lead acid batteries so this was doomed from the start. Here’s a picture of one battery (which is dead) and another which was bulging and clearly overcharged.
Our suggestion is to connect the charge controller that they owned but wasn’t connected to a deep cycle battery. They can then wire lights that run off of 12V to the charge controller. They should also ground the solar panels.
Village 2
This setup was in a better shape. Here, a 100+ Watt panel was mounted on a tower and was connected to a charge controller and then to a ~4 year old Bosch deep-cycle. However, they connected the radio directly to the battery instead of out of the charge controller. This is probably fine, but the bigger deal is that didn’t know how to use the battery to run lights or any other devices. It is definitely an overpowered system for a small radio.
The plan is to use this system more by connecting up 12V lights to the charge controller. In addition, they are going to check the health of the battery and upgrade it if necessary. As for our distributed systems, we have communications set up with the community through our partner in Cusco, Q’ellqa as well as an assigned and trained handyman that can help maintain them. The last thing we want is a bunch of installed systems that aren’t working perfectly.
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