Tape #308 - Solar-Based Rural Electrification and Microcredit

In the developing world where men are increasingly demanding technology transfer appropriate technology transfer, its therefore essential that women are engaged in decisions about technology and be trained in the use of technology. Energy is the nutrient of the modern economy. It powers our homes, our schools, our hospitals, shops, stores, it enables transportation and communications banking and finance, and indirectly even our democratic institutions. Women must be involved in decisions about energy use. As you can see from the distinguished panel, men are primarily involved in energy just as in agriculture, we need to become more informed and more aware of our energy choices. This panel is bringing together two areas that are converging. Women’s access to capital and specifically through micro-lending and how this is enabling rural women to have access to clean sources of energy, solar energy. In addition to providing power, this source of energy can generate income, can increase productivity and profitability in both developed and developing countries. Our first speaker is Depaul Rura, from the Gramene Bank. I don’t think that I need to talk to you about the Gramene Bank it is pioneered the concept of micro enterprise and it is doing something very interesting, it is bringing micro lending together with the energy sector and trying to link financing for women so as to be able to provide access to power in rural areas. Mr. Depaul Rura: Thank you very much. I realize there are some resourceful women here, Gramene bank is really a women's bank and a bank by the women. But we are men working there as a employee not as an owner and not as a beneficiary. So Gramene Bank is a bank for the poor most of the Bangladesh people are below poverty line so before 22 years ago, initiated this program, lending to the very poor women without any security. The main focus of the bank, to improve the lives of the poor women of Bangladesh. That’s why we have 95% of women now only 5% are men in our clients. So the micro lending is a really good opportunity for the really poor women in rural Bangladesh. They are changing their life to income from having credit from he Gramene bank. The main focus of the bank to the poor women because the situation was the dissolving the performance was dissolving through experience we found that the poor women are changing their lives and are really changing their income. And because in Bangladesh, the situation the women really face poverty, if you see poor women they are double deprived. In our situation, the women are really dependable, and they outlook to women is not really fair enough. In Bangladesh society in Islamic society sometimes poor women really treated as subhuman in a situation so the government is really targeting the poor women because they are a victim of poverty and they can really change their lives through credit. Our main focus exclusive focus on bottom poor, especially suitable for the poor we have loan portfolios suitable for the poor people and so the because I like to explain to the government to the anergy before that I like to explain something about the government so you can get some idea how it is. Housing is also on our long portfolio. In Bangladesh the poor women and even women who don’t have lending in the name of the poor women but we are providing room 600 for $300 US dollar for housing and shelter and the lending in the name of women. You know our situation if you say divorce, divorce, divorce, then you are divorced. But it is not legally accepted but it is the custom. But we are providing loan in the name of women. So if you can say taloc, taloc, taloc, man has to leave, women continue the home because it is constructed by the government law. So this is our and our women’s economy is much imported in our experience. We found that when they get loan and offer getting income, food to buy, clothes for the children and books for the children and buy work for the husband. She take last person in the family. It is very rewarding and our bank is ownership by the women because they buy share, $2.5 per share and they become owner and now they become the director of the bank. So targeting people nine member are women from the community. They are in the decision making process. Because of this in your city, lending has become a very important item. We double up not only government but we double up some other companies individually. The Gramene Bank first, then we textile so the handset the mobility for women. We double up 16 companies for different purposes. So one is the energy and 1996 we double up the company the energy. Might become the managing index. One of the important this is the total government issue around 400 panel leaving Panten. This is where we are beginning. We are going to procure much more larger scale with a soft economy in marketing. Option also so this is the total situation and we are also investigating our customer how many case study, we already case study for some customer before taking solar home system working 8 hours, 12 hours, 14 hours, if you see every grocery shop house, sawmill and different activities have extension of working hours. So we are trying to lend and to income generations so they can afford it otherwise you don’t know about the solar home system. So we lend you with the credit and income. We have an income situation also, we found that the increased income shop increase US dollar before taking system. This is Mr Scott Sclar whose the Executive Director of the US Solar Energy Industries Association. He’s going to give you a hands on show of what some of the solar technologies are and some of their applications for both developed and developing countries. Thank you very much. What’s most important first is to tell you who I represent, I run the trade association that represents the solar industry in the US. We have 165 manufacturers and components suppliers, which exports 70 percent of our technology to the developing world today. I also am Executive Secretary of a 12 nation organization represented in the solar trade associations around the world. Counsel of international solar industry associations. I want to set the frame work of this discussion by giving you a few facts. The one that I believe is most compelling is that the extraction conversion and utilization of energy is the single largest cause of air and water pollution on this planet. The extraction conversion and use of energy is the single largest cause of air and water pollution and is also the largest emitter of gases that are changing our climate. And if anybody thinks that energy is not important, to our global survival, you need to rethink. For those of you that are hands on in rural areas, there’s another issue and that is energy is one of the largest inputs to whether anything in the agricultural sector is profitable or unprofitable, in fact the lack of energy or the poor use of energy in many cases is one of the single top determining factors. Now the uses of solar electric technology and the Gramene presentation gave you a sense of it, but I want to go to a little more detail. Obviously, lighting and communications is a natural, its low energy technology, and its something that nice and I’ll get into that later. But refrigeration has become a very big issue for us and I’ll talk about the economics shortly. Grain preservation the industry produces technology globally and I just want to give you the two novel ones I’ve seen lately that I just think are great. One are noise emitters, meaning that they use a solar panel and a battery and put out a noise that rodents cant stand and so by doing it, its a very nonpesticide way of rodent control, very low energy. The other one is carbon dioxide generators. For larger places to hold grains not only can’t rugs and rodents breath carbon dioxide, but in certain concentrations, but its fire prevention as well. So for those in the terms of dealing with grains. Water and irrigation is pure and low for my colleague back there, Peter raise your hand. My international expert here at SCIDA, we have been working with the irrigation pumping industry. There’s virtually no pump that is really not a solar pump. So you can, were working ;with that industry obviously to make sure we size the technology with the pumps, but I want to go beyond that. There’s virtually no electric motor that really isn’t a solar motor. All motors are really in terms of electricity, dc motors and what comes out of panels is dc current and what comes out of batteries is dc current. So anything relating to cottage industry is really accessible by the technology. Beyond irrigation purification is becoming a big market for us. And again, we’ve done obviously a self filtration systems and reverse osmosis systems but again the most fun technology that’s in the market lately is ozonaters. Actually in the US we’re selling the technology for swimming pools so you don’t use chlorine and its a circle that floats in the swimming pool and the solar panel is part of the circle on top, you can get it in many catalogues, Sharper Image, and it creates electric current it splits the water molecule and ozone oxygens a natural disinfectant. You disinfectant your water and we’re selling that on the international market too. So you don’t have to do immense amounts of chlorine or other kinds of chemicals so there’s technology out there that can deal with these issues. But our big market and our most important market is either hybriding with meaning co-working or displacing diesel engines. Those of you that are supporting in your programs diesel and propane generation I will get into the economics of why that is foolish momentarily. But I want to talk to; you about two basic issues, one is obviously reliability of supply globally has been a problem the second is the ground water pollution from diesel when a diesel generator breaks, which happens a couple of times a year, a large number of them dump diesel fuel. The data out of the world bank is 12% of ground water pollution globally, 12% is dumped diesel fuel that seeps into the ground. So what were doing to ourselves is destroying our future watershed. And it would be one think if this was not economical to displace diesels but as I will get into it, it is ridiculous to do anything else. The other technology I ‘ve talked about also with solar electric technology is electric fencing, subbolts protect garden plots or to keep animals in place. We saw a lot of that globally. Finally we’re talking mostly about solar electric technology, solar water heating is use more and more and clearly in building the tourism industry, ecotourism is our biggest market, course obviously hotels and motels and inns needs constant hot water. But the process heating industry in the adsector is very very key, in canning, dairy and other kinds of food processing where you need both low and high temperature water, it is crazy to use propane. Or some other things that are being used or even electricity you see that is just not cost effective. And that’s becoming a very very big market. What’s nice in all of these technologies and its my seg way into the economics is that only about even when we export in the US and there are a lot of indigenous industries in the countries too but even if we export, its only 40% of the total system. So there’s a lot of local content. SO its great to tie technology where you’re using and leveraging in local technology and services too so we’ve been having a very good success in creating a local economic development. The photo able take technology is warranted for 20 years in the US and the batteries that we sell, the sealed jell cell batteries are warranted for 10 years. SO the fact of the matter is we have long term warranty and frankly most technology produced today last a lot longer than that. So the real issue is building local competency on sizing systems, making sure the right components are there but in terms of the component parts, were at a pretty sophisticated level. What is the major market value for the technology are two things, knowledge thank you for coming and letting this bald bearded guy come before you so thank you but secondly is cash flow and lending. That’s why what Gremene’s doing is so critical and why we’d appeal to you in the NGO sector particularly to work with us that and the private sector. What you’re doing with solar is basically paying for your capital equipment and fuel up front. And in the US we’ve had a similar problem when people when we decided as a country to have people own their own homes, the average bank loan at the time was only seven years. So most people could not afford their own home in seven years. So we created a secondary and long term lending program so that the lending term was twenty so it would be for the life of the lender of the home. And what happened is it transformed our society. And the biggest sign of economic health in the US is really how many housing new starts there is and its a multi, multi hundred billion dollar program that really drives our economy. What the same is really true for this energy system, you are not paying for fuel so need a way to capitalize the fuel and cap the cost for a longer period of time. Now given the US if I put a water heater on my home which costs three times more than the average water that I can buy from the store, a lot of people don’t do it, but if I add that four to nine dollars a month to my mortgage and I am saving twenty to forty dollars a month on my utility bill, that makes economic sense. The same is true in what were trying to drive in the ag sector globally. There is no reason and Gremean is showing us, they deserve a lot of credit, there is no reason why we can’t extend lending times and makes us support fuel less technology. Now we have the same problem on refrigeration. I want to give you a two minute on the fight we had with the World Health Organization on refrigeration. Our industry, me personally, went to WHO, World Health Organization and said, you should stop supporting the use of propane and diesel refrigeration. And they said you know you are nuts and I’ve been called that many times before and I go for what reason this time. Why would we want to sell refrigerators that cost 25% more than propane or diesel refrigerators and I said because the fuel supply is unreliable and we lost things in those refrigerators and you don’t count that in the economics. So what we did is we hired an economist of their choosing and we looked at the vaccine or food loss for just the first year of operation of that refrigerator. And what was staggering to them because they said it was insignificant by %, it ranged a minimum of 20% world wide to 70% world wide. An when you take the first year loss of the contents of that refrigerator it makes up the cost of the increase of the capital cost of solar refrigeration and we are now specified by the World Health Organization. So the issues are not just pure capitol cost, the issue is maintenance and reliability of fuel and if you look at the other issue is maintenance, this technology has no moving parts. It has no fuel, so obviously, yes, you are going to have to wipe off the panel once in a while for bird droppings and dust so there is a little maintenance, yes, I have had projects world wide and a very large one in a developing country where we ran an entire hospital with photo able tags and where the new engineering director of the hospital turned all 388 photo able tag panels upside down so they would not be broken by kids with stones not that they ever were and was shocked to find the panels didn’t work. So we’ve had problems like that. But if you turn the panels toward the sun and you take the crud off them once in a while, the long term relationship and survivability of the technology is very high. Our big market is the cellular phone industry. And the reason their buying us is because their beyond the wire and they need absolute reliability. Now that multi hundred billion dollar a year industry is using the technology, there is no reason why we can’t integrate it for people who need it. What I want to leave you, my second plea is don’t go backward, that poor people should not be forced to use inferior technology. That is crazy and I want to point out that 20 years ago, there was some guy who went to AT&T and said the future of communication is beyond the wire. And he was laughed out of the room by the board of directors of AT&T who had to spend 8 billion dollars to get back in to the business they said the head of AT&T, 20 years ago said the penetration of this technology will be one percent of the market. It is now 12% of the global market, it is the most profitable part of the market. And then I brought my solar charged lap top. And I want to tell you something, that aside from the largest computer seller in the world, saying PC, personal computers, said no future, it will never be three percent of the market, and then the biggest computer houses in the world said lap tops have no future, I am happy to report to you at the end of 1997, lap tops have out sold PCS. It is computing beyond the wire, it is communications beyond the wire and the next semi-conductor technology to take over this planet is energy beyond the wire. Don’t you forget that. You do not need to sell inferior technology of wiring up people or using fuels and having to import and lost local economic wealth and by importing energy. It is a thing of the past. Five economics, I am going to give you three one minute minutes so you can consider some of the side benefits of this technology. I have one company that makes many manufacturing plants, little turn key plants, fits in the size of this room, that people can make little companies their own forbad able tag panels. So you don’t have to import them if you don’t want to. And the fact is the technology is we can democratize access to electricity if we really want it. I have another company that is capitalizing with different banks to replace basically the car battery industry in providing electricity to people. As you know, car batteries are not deep cycle batteries, car batteries are used predominantly as the way to provide a lot of electricity in the developing world and what we are developing with the battery industry are global recycling programs with deep cycle batteries tied to people who are already in the business of getting batteries to people but now are trained to charged them with solar to orchestrate the system so the systems are right and work they repair the systems and recycle the batteries so we don’t pollute the world with lead and other heavy metals. So there are ways to do this in a country with the existing infrastructure. The third company I want to talk about is similar to Gramene except they really got into it in the solar approach in that their feeling was we’ll do micro lending first to those in the ag sector in the food stalls just to have lighting just so they can stay open longer. And when they got into it and those obviously had cash flow more and more of the food stalls got lights and they started going into the household sector and we’ve brought in outside accounting firms to look at the default rates of these loans and their lower than anything in the US of America today. The fact is when people do get lighting and refrigeration and a TV set for the first time. They don’t default on the technology that gives them the first base of quality life and improvement of their lives. Now I brought you another thing. (Away from microphone) My phone is solar powered and this is a little 12 volt charger I have that comes with my phone and I have just a little panel that charges this phone so yes, my phone and computer, my lap top are solar powered. And my watch is solar powered, its been going eight years now and never needs a battery. But, we have, that is the last problem you need and we will have those catalogs to you. I decided to be slightly less huckertous but I am, I know you’re shocked, I just want to lay out three things cause I know you all really are in the future business of making this would a better place to live. So I want to lay out my three parting thoughts for you. One, we know that in the developing world, women spend the majority of their time dealing with collecting water and wood. We know that. There’s no way we can make this world productive when we have so many people, the majority of people unproductive in those two areas. This is an enabling technology that can deal with that problem. The second one is children. The, I have had numerous experiences of getting irrigation programs started, and I’ll use Africa, but its true in Latin American and South Asia, where for the first time, children have learned that water is not muddy, but clear, you don’t need to have parasites and the fact of their lives being changed dramatically, we have lighted more school and community centers with solar and the first time the community has had read reliable education, pre-natal care, and job training programs and medical refrigerators for the first time. It changes the quality of life as you know probably better than me, are quite profound. The reason I got into this business was I like technology but it is clearly one of the few technologies in the world that has no emissions, no noise, and is completely decentralized, again, very similar to cellular phone technology. If we do not have strategic alliances with people who deal with people, to bring this technology in the future, there are many courses on our planet to stay with traditional coal, oil, propane, that would be a tragedy and when I see it in a ribbon cut over the last 10 years automated manufacturing plants that make photo able technology in the US, and there’s a similar growth globally, I know we are on the cusp of a technology revolution that we have never seen before and if we have a willing partnership together we can help drive that and have more people access and have a better quality of life. So thank you for hearing me out. I’ll answer questions later.

Were going to keep Scott here for the rest of the day. We have a booth and you can grab him afterwards and find out where to get all these wonderful toys. Our next speaker is Larry Flowers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory which is part of the Department of Energy. The Laboratory was established to do research and development so as to decrease the cost of solar technology. In the process, they have brought their expertise to international projects to help people to find out about the appropriate technologies, solar technologies to use in various projects and Larry will tell you a little bit about their experience.

Its always so much fun to follow Scott. And I think were building to the full Monty at the end of the, I’ll explain that at the end, but I have no overheads, but I do want to talk about renewable energy. I almost got up here and said ditto and sat down to Scott’s talk. National Renewable Energy Laboratory is in Golden Colorado so its sort of shares Golden with the Coors company. We were established in 1978 by Jimmy Carter in response to the energy crisis. Scott is a major if not the most important factor in our continued funding for the Department of Energy, we do as Mal said, research and development in the area of renewables. Now, some people confuse solar with just solar panels. The fact of the matter is solar other than the sun, creates many forms of renewable energy. It is the power that essentially creates wind energy because you have differential heating of the Earth’s surfaces and that’s what causes wind. You have hydropower which is very important in the developing world which is caused by evaporation and condensation, its caused by the sun, you have bio-mass which is developed through photosynthesis. So when we talk about solar energy, we mean something that is in many forms and the fact of the matter is, the world has an abundant amount of solar energy in many forms and in most every country, every region, you have some form of solar energy whether it be direct sunlight or biomass or hydropower or wind or combinations thereof. Solar is a very indigenous resource and therefore one that should be harvested by the nations of the world. Unfortunately the knowledge not the technology of how to harvest these resources is not well spread and in new technology that compliments what Scott was talking about of course is the Internet. I want to talk about that in a little bit, because the Internet is an amazing source of relevant information, provided you access it and it not intimidated by it. Or in some cases, like myself, gets lost in it and can get very inefficient in daily activities. One number I want to throw out to you is that there are approximately two billion people without electricity. And the really sad news is even with very aggressive electrification programs by many countries, the birth rate is greater than electrification rate, so that number is not shrinking even though their putting, there’s many hundreds of millions of dollars being put into extending the grid to rural communities, the population growth is greater than electrification rates, so that two billion number is not coming down. Now for those of you who are capitalists, you divide that number by an average family of five, that four hundred million families out there without electricity. They do use energy, they use it in the form of candles, kerosene, battery charging, wood, and they actually spend on average, about five dollars a month on average for energy services. Multiply that out by five dollars a month times four hundred million families, that’s 20 billion dollars a year is being spent for energy services by the

He has two apprentice and he has a solar system the extended 2 to 3 hours working time, so he has more income and he can afford it. Please, I think I have one other program, cyclone and tunnel we have get some benefit, we establish some van, we bought for bargaining power to send to instil the important one is available out of Cauldron it can produce gas. Also income generation. I have some slides to show you the situation in Bangladesh and also the solar system. This is a solar panel. People are sitting on top of the house and visit all the garden and you can see Bangladesh at the time. The people are maintaining. Our people are maintaining solar home systems for one year so that we get the installment at the same time we are giving training to the people so that they can. This is also a solar home system. This is also rural Bangladesh. There is plenty of sunshine. So people watching TV because it is very enjoyable. People see governments producing and there is no electricity. Poor people live in bioshacks. Within one year they can have a solar home system. There is no electricity so the solar system helps provide more work time so more income. This is a sawmill. Light helps to saw the timber. This is also income people are using for lighting purposes. They can walk in the light much more people. This is an agriculture room. Women really take bitter lead so this is a very interesting generation for them. This is people making robe from different, so this is a dock because Bangladesh is a poor country, 120 million people live here, 54000 square miles. If you bring all the people in the US that is maybe one part. Our land is very fertile so if you put anything you grow and you can raise poultry easily.

I think that's an important motivation. There's a big market out there. Now the question is how do you access that market cause it's very dispersed and out in very difficult places to get to and that's one of the real barriers is the infrastructure to service those markets. Scott talked about a company in the Dominican Republic Intersaul and Soluse who lease panels, 20 watt panels, 20 watt panel for us who live in the developing world is sort of a, you know, we have flashlights that big. 20 watt panels can give enough energy for a home to light several 12 watt light bulbs and a radio. That's really important to these communities as far as their family life and studying. And the _____ gave you some very good samples of how lights helped the family to become educated in many aspects of health and productive uses. We are involved at Enrel in a village power program. Now Enrel is very significant high tech place that spends $150,000,000 to $200,000,000 a year in all of these various technologies. There's a small group of us who have taken it upon ourselves to do applications work to try to apply these technologies in a way that uses commercial equipment, Scott's companies produce, for applications in villages, Scott mentioned Mayas application, schools are a very big program to electrify rural schools. I mean it's surprising to me, Argentina, you think of Argentina as a developed country, but it still has 5,000 unelectrified rural schools. So, we think about the developing world, there's some countries that have the same needs as far as schools. The second big application that we see are health clinics, this idea of providing power to health clinics, so that they can keep the cold chain, and the refrigeration chain intact so that they can have vaccines to help the children. They also in many cases have TV's in health clinics where you can get education. I mean I was reading the other day about the big AIDS epidemic that exists in Africa. Education is one of the biggest issues. And electricity in the schools and the health posts in the local community can provide also the communication so you can have education on how to deal with many of the health issues. Scott talked briefly about water quality, water quality in the developing world is really critical to health of the children and solar energy, renewable energy, providing electricity not only pumps the water but also can purify it. One of the things we're starting to look into right now, is the down side, the waste treatment. While you may have water and you may even have it purified through sand filters. What do you do with the whole waste stream? If any of you have ever traveled to some of the urban areas in the developing world it's pretty tragic as far as how to deal with the waste stream that's created by populations. And so treating waste water is another area that renewable energy can facilitate in remote communities. One of the areas that we're working on specifically at Enrel is in the area of producing ice. Getting produce to the market, getting fish to the market is a real problem if you don't have some kind of refrigeration capability. What's nice about renewable energy is you can put that energy right into ice. Ice acts as the storage medium. And wind which I specialize in. Wind which is very erratic, can only come for several hours a day, or even maybe only several days a week uses the ice as a way to store the energy. So producing ice in villages so that they can keep their produce or their fish fresh to get to market dramatically increases the value of that fish, in some cases they dry that fish and than send it to market, the value is 1/5 what it is for fresh fish. A point that I don't think Scott made, but it's a very important point, regarding pollution, as I understand it, the airborne and congestion diseases are now the largest killer of infants, it used to be waterborne diseases, and now it's the air problem. Inhaling the hut environment where they burn charcoal or they burn wood in the hut to cook. In many of these huts they don't even have ventilation. Lighting and efficient cooking in those huts could dramatically impact that. So for those of you who are interested in health and improvement of health in the rural communities, a 20 watt panel can dramatically improve the quality of kerosene essentially. One point that Scott made that I want to amplify on is the issue of diesel retrofit. There are many villages that have small diesel generators. A little shop has it. Or the chief of the village has it. Some places are small generators. Those can be hybridized with renewable energy in many cases to convert a short period of electrification to 24 hours. So that one of the things that we're working on is converting 4-6 hour electrification systems to 24 hour power. 24 hour power is really important and critical to microenterprise development. In many countries where actually they have a mini grid in the village they'll run the diesel from maybe 6 at night to 10 at night. Because that's all that they can afford in diesel fuel or that's all that's all the government will issue them. Adding renewables to that system can change that to a 24 hour power, because in most villages you have a morning peak and an evening peak but during the day there is no energy available. So if you have a microenterprise that requires electricity to either run the motors or the refrigerators you don't have the power available so adding renewables can very efficiently convert a 4-6 mini grid to a 24 hour grid. One of the corollaries to that is the idea of a microenterprise zone in the village. This idea is being considered in a number of places. We are hoping to do it in the Dominican Republic with the Solus and Intersol. The idea here is the people in the village can possibly only afford to have ____ panels for lights in their homes for the lights and or the radio. But the microenterprise zone in the center of the village where AC power or recurrent power you can run motors, you can run refrigerators, you can run a variety of small businesses with AC power, have that in a confined area and have that AC power available during the day. So if you had an enterprise that could really benefit from AC power you'd do it in that region and necessarily have to do it for the whole village. We're going to be exploring this in the Dominican Republic and we're going to be producing a guide book on how to use renewable energy for microenterprise zones and what microenterprise opportunities that there might be that we've experienced in villages. Scott talked about in country capacity. Most all of the countries that we've work in, eventually in order to make renewables really stick have to have a capability in that country that can evaluate the opportunity for renewables. So that typically is a technology capacity and understanding. We are working at Enrel to try to provide that to a number of countries. We bring people to Enrel from anywhere from a month to a year to train them in the alternatives, the cost of the alternatives, the experiences in microcredit and microlending so they can see how to deal with capital intense technology. And the cost is typically is sort of one of those huh..I can't afford that. But there are ways that you can afford that and when you look at it from a life cycle stand point in many cases it makes more sense than what your currently doing in putting out money for kerosene and diesel fuels. I wanted to mention for those of you who do have access to the Internet we do have web site and on our web site we have a village power center it's called RSVP and on that web site we are putting out projects, we have a 155 projects described on that web site. Different applications, different technologies, all appropriate and bring used in villages around the world. So we want people for instance, in Southern Chili to see what's going on in Brazil, or Vietnam or Ghana, or South Africa, or Northern Russia. So they can see that these technologies they are not being experimented with. These technologies are being applied, has information on the suppliers, on how it was financed, what the economics are, what the issues were, what the barriers were, and so people can go and see what's being done around the world with these technologies. So please, its free there's lots of information there, we are encouraging our partners and countries to get access to the Internet and then giving them direct information as to what we think would be useful to them. We also have on that Internet, a discussion group on village power issues. We haven't had the discussion on gender related issues in village power. But that certainly is open for that could be something that would be very interesting to get people from around the world talking about particular issues associated with rural development.

And lastly, we have a village power conference every year. This year it's going to be at the World Bank, October 6-8. We'll be bringing people in from around the world talking specifically about how they implemented renewables, and what the implementation of those renewables did to the welfare of the villagers. The education, the health, and the economic development. So your welcome to come to that. Information about that is on the web site. I think but I'm not sure, but this brochure was in allot of the handouts. This describes our programs.

And with that I want to tell you about what this is MWCA. David Killston, my colleague over here from Anrecca who we work with in South America. We were at dinner last night and he was telling me how intimidated he was being at lunch yesterday with sort of nine women around the table and him. And I said, well we must have an organization here to be able to express that we certainly aren't women. But there must be an organization about men who care about women in development. So we have an MWCA. Now I don't think these guys are up to this. What do you think? huh?

It's MWCA. Their still intimidated, see. So with that I'll introduce David Killston and the full monte.

It's 3 a.m. and the baby is crying. It's 3 a.m. it's dark and the baby is crying. It's 3 a.m. it's dark, and you can't remember where you put the matches, and the baby is crying. It's 3 a.m., it's dark, and you can't remember where you put the matches, and your not sure if you had enough kerosene in your little lantern, and the baby is crying. As I typed together some of the aspects in the minutes that follow, the idea will be to try to fit some of the pieces together that have already been mentioned here. Depaul has talked about the part that has to do with credit. Making capital available, making money available. Scott has talked about the industry. Larry has talked about Enrel and aspects of the research and the theory and the possibilities. Begash who follows me and myself represent those who are out in the field implementing. And for me it is a delight to be out in the field. Some of you don't have to use your imagination to be thinking about babies crying at 3 a.m. You've been there. And those of you that are out there as quiet heroes. Sometimes have to solve noisy problems even if it's 3 a.m. So how do you help the quiet heroes implement projects that will make a difference in their life. Here we are seated in Washington DC, and we benefit from technology that has been able to mature for decades. We've got the overhead projector, the lighting, the air conditioning, the speaker system, all of that powered by energy. Out in remote villages, it's a different world. A part of what happens is as you are introduced to a technology that novel to you. Is something that happened a man that years ago was trying to cross the Mississippi during the winter, it was frozen over but he had no idea how thick the ice was. So he got down on his hands and knees and started across. You can imagine how long it took him to get half way across, gingerly crawling on all fours, when he heard somebody approaching behind him whistling. It was somebody on a horse drawn wagon with a full load. This man had crossed the Mississippi before, he knew how thick the ice was. Scott is encouraging you to drive across this renewables ice with a semi-truck. But let's at least try a horse drawn wagon. When you think about fitting the pieces together the work that we've done with solar based rural electrification in Latin America will be the focus for the next few minutes. What we have been able to do includes work in these countries but is not limited to these countries, work in Guatemala, and Honduras, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Bolivia, the Dominican Republic also is on the list. But I will focus mainly on what we have already been able to do to try to pull together the pieces that have already been presented here and give you some information that you can take with you as you return to your positions as decision makers that can have an impact on whether or not this type of technology gets implemented in countries where you are involved. The country of Bolivia is about the size of Texas and California combined. Has a population six and a half million people. Eighteen percent of the graphic area is electrified. But only forty-six percent of the population have access to electricity or water. The majority of these people live in rural areas. As with any infrastructure demographic density makes such a difference regarding the economic and financial liability. This listing is a partial listing of those programs or those projects that the NRECA has implemented using renewable energy. Biomass has been mentioned and that's the lead example. We put in a one megawatt biomass plant in the northeast corner of Bolivia which is a part of the Amazon Rain Forest Basin. A problem in that village was all of their electricity was diesel generated. What they had as another problem was the pollution caused by open air burning of Brazil nut shells or dumping it into the river. What we did was put in a biomass plant that burns Brazil nut shells and turns it into electricity. It's a town of about 6,000 inhabitants and now forty percent of the electricity in that small town is generated by biomass. We've all done work in wind and solar powered water pumping, we done work in electrifying the national park facilities. Somebody was commenting before this session, what a shame it was that in some beautiful and ecologically sensitive areas you've got things for research and for tourists out in these areas with diesel jacks. So what we've been able to do in Bolivia is install solar panels and solar systems out in some of these areas to help scientists with the research and those tourists that are ecotourists. Remote telecommunications has been mentioned, battery chargers for rural radio receivers. In one of the sessions the school of the air has been mentioned, and in Bolivia they have introduced these program and that is what we support with these rural radio receivers. They're solar powered, solar recharged and the students can tune in remotely to high quality educational programs broadcast from the city. Wind based hybrid village power systems with Larry and others from Enrel, we're been working especially in Chila on that. And than as been mentioned by Depaul the solar home systems. One of the questions you will have, is what can it take for you to go back and do like wise. One thing is obviously is to find the people that have already walked across the ice, know how thick it is, have already run into the problems, have already paid the price. You identify solid partners, without partners that know what they are doing in terms of in contact with the people, the technology can be beautiful but it's not necessarily going to fly. It think that many have you have encountered in cases such as the latrine issue that went something like this, in Bolivia people went out into the remote areas and said we are a health organization, we are going to promote out houses. The people said you know what, it would be really great if that money could be invested in potato storage facilities, we would prefer that first. Somebody went about a year later, and found the area completely out housed and serving very well as potato storage facilities. Solid partners are key to be able to understand what the needs of the villagers are. Create the legal and administrative framework. Depaul mentioned that the government is now waving taxes. In Bolivia, the import taxes are on the order of thirty to forty percent. So obviously if taxes can be waved on renewable energy technology, it can make a big different on how accessible that technology is to the villagers. Identifying failure points. Sometimes perhaps at these conferences we all enjoy to talk about successes. But it is key to learn from the past, understand where failures have been, be willing to admit failure quickly, and move on. Doing the appropriate risk analysis, assessing counterpart capabilities, performing the benefit analysis, and all of this comes before you walk in the front door of a store so to speak. If you procure the technology without having done your research you can be in big trouble. Some of the counterpart agencies that we have worked with in Bolivia and other countries, include electric cooperatives, there are also private, for-profit utilities, municipalities, regional governments, agriculture production cooperatives, and NGOs. The tendency in Bolivia as throughout Latin America is to privatize and they each have their own variation on the theme in Bolivia's capitalization. But much of what is going on is that tendency now toward decentralization, privatization, and capitalization.

What does a typical solar home system consist of? You've already heard mention of some of the technology and the range, power system that is available. Someone, Larry it think mentioned the

20 watt system. The typical system that we have used in Bolivia is a 53 watt nominal module, solar panel with a charged controller. There are systems that don't use the controllers but that's hard on the batteries. I won't go into much technical detail but that's the basic list of what we use in a solar home system and in Bolivia all taxes paid, all installation costs that system now runs about $800. There have been times that we were able to subsidize it under a bilateral agreement, some of the equipment went into the country tax-free and so that brought the cost down and we were at about the $550 level. And so that gives you some idea of what a solar home system consists of. Larry mentioned that even a 20 watt system can provide adequate lighting, with this 53 watt system we have 7 watt fluorescent lamps, voltage adapters for radio. That is so important to them. It is their link to the outside world. They can plug small black and white televisions into that adaptor and their cassette recorders and transistor radios are extremely, extremely important. Just to mention one thing about that one-amp hour battery. Those things are not light. But, when the people are interested enough in being able to see an international soccer match, they are known to remove those from where they are installed in their houses, hike kilometers up the side of a mountain with their little black and white television under their arm and their battery somebody else carrying to be able to see whether or not their favorite soccer team is going to be able to that match. I will only site the example of one project. Throughout Bolivia we have installed are have at least ready to install about three thousand five hundred systems. This particular project started out in September of 1993, in the providence of New Flavajavas and Santa Cruz, it's an agricultural area, very dispersed settlements and a potential for what we would say 5,000 users throughout that area. We have done it with a rural electric cooperative. Here it mentions the largest in South America, it might even be the largest throughout the world, that number is a little dated, my recent figure is about 165,000 members. This is a rural electric cooperative. The pilot project started out with 100 systems, and in 1996 expanded it to 1,300 more. What are some of the factors that went into this project in terms to the relationships between organizations. You can see the flow of responsibilities and financing, Enreca identified the project, worked to identify counterparts, in the case CRE, provided the technical assistance in financing, you can see in the upper right hand corner, CRE than in turn having been trained by us, did promotion, installation, maintenance and they replaced the faulty equipment, there are different models but this is more of an energy service provider model. CRE charges the user $8 a month. Larry, and maybe some others mentioned that the average around the world would be about $5 a month that they spend in alternative energy. In Bolivia, we find that it can go on up to $20 and sometimes more and so as we put systems out in the field whether they are buying them themselves or buying the service from a cooperative such as in this case, that gives you a range from $5 to about $20 a month. In terms of the decision criteria you can see that it is important to be able to have your priorities straight and pass all of these issues through prioritization filters. You have to make sure that the financing is available, and the technology and it's costs. Scott impressed up with how great renewables is. But one of the things that you have to keep in mind is that high initial barrier as Larry mentioned people hear about the cost of renewables and they so Woe! To repeat what Scott said, your paying up front for fuel costs, so one of the things is to do lifecycle analysis and understand what you can do to convince the financing agencies to put that money up front for the benefit of the people over the long run. I go back to that issue of the latrines and the potato storage. What is the priority of the community? Gather your baseline information go through you matrix of decision making, you have your approves projects, and than out into the field. What have been keys to success for our Latin American program. Which in some ways you could say would be keys to success in implemented. Though I'm not advocating a cookie cutter approach by any means. Have well defined responsibilities. I think in management what we realize, any place and any time you want to get something done, you have to be able to leave a meeting, knowing who is going to do what by when. Co-financing, the cost sharing agreements, working out the legal arrangement, getting the promotion out there, making it simple and clear, sometimes these people are not literate but they certainly understand technology. It's amazing how quickly they adapt. Stores for example who used to sell many, many flashlight batteries, once the solar panels have been installed, no longer have a market for flashlight batteries but they start selling distilled water for the batteries, and fuses for the lights and the regulator. Team work is critical, you have to understand what your going to bring to the table, fulfill your part of the bargain and expect that they will comply and fill they part. Training is essential. And what we have had is up to five levels of training. From top management in government positions all the way down to the end user. And what we have found is it's key to be able to demonstrate the ice is thick. Have successful pilots that show them that you can walk out across that ice with confidence. It's 3 a.m., the baby is crying, help turn on the lights.

one of building capacity. This is one of the key things that Winrock's renewable energy program with country office programs called REPSOs (Renewable Energy Program Support Offices) often times do, which is build core competencies within countries. I will next show how many countries we're doing it in. We use renewable energy technologies in improving the quality of rural life. But in increasing production of productivity of agriculture but also reducing things like the burden of women having to carry water, fire wood, these kinds of issues. One of the things that we concentrate on is working out the financing issues, developing models for those, and also we work to make visible markets. Rural populations have dispersed their requirements are small, but taken together they can be quite attractive markets. And work to aggregate these markets and make them visible to investors. The renewable energy program has REPSO offices in these five countries so far. Brazil, India, Philippines, Indonesia, and Guatemala for Central America. As I was talking about, these places all have groups of local people who are working there who expertise in the technology, in terms of promotion of technologies, financing, training of maintenance, etc... As an example, I myself, I'm from Nepal, I'm proposing to get back at the end of the summer to start up a REPSO in Nepal. And hope within a couple of years to have a core group like this in Nepal. With these groups what we do is work with angios and others or community groups that don't have competency in renewable energy, who have questions about these things and we provide that on the ground. And that's very essential to our program. We work in a range of technologies as Larry has pointed out, renewable energy technology are all solar in origin. But what we like is about renewable energy technologies is their local availability. The fact that the sun, water, wind, these are all locally available. You don't have to depend on diesel being carried from the outside, kerosene being carried from the outside. And we are working in additional to solar PV, with wind both electric and direct mechanical drive, similarly with small scale hydro producing electricity as well as driving agriculture machinery directly from shaft power, also with biomass and geothermal, which is the energy coming out from the heat of the earth. I don't have to remind you perhaps how important energy is in agriculture, some of the earlier speakers have already talked about that. We know that in addition to pumping for irrigation, energy is also used for post harvesting and processing. And renewable energy is not new to agriculture. For two thousand years people have used power of water to drive grain mills, and wind has been used for pumping water for over a thousand years. In industrialized countries much of the small scale renewables in agriculture have been subplanted with extended electricity grids and by burning fossil fuels. But of course in developing countries where Winrock does most of it's work, extended grids are not available. We've heard about numbers 15% only electrified in Bangladesh, 40% electrified in Bolivia, in Nepal also only 15% are electrified. Which means large numbers of people don't have access to electricity. And in a country like Nepal which is full of mountains, makes it almost impossible to electrify people by extending the grid. And as a result, renewable energy technologies are really the only real possibility. If after thirty, forty, fifty years of planned development only 15% get electricity and the population growth is outstripping these electrification amounts, more people don't have electricity at the end of the year than at the beginning. I will briefly describe three projects, three Winrock projects, one is a solar ____water pumping project in Mexico in corroboration with Sandy Labs, second a wind electric water pumping and freezing project in Indonesia, and micro-hydro grain and rice milling project in Nepal. As I mentioned the Mexico project primarily uses Solar PV's for pumping of water, and this is both for pumping water for irrigation but also for livestock and drinking water. Just some examples of projects, the costs, what it's used for, and as you can see these cover a range of heights that waters have to be pumped and the amounts depending on the need and the locality. The wind power for islands and non-governmental development, as I named the wind project in Indonesia uses wind energy not solar PV this time, but wind energy, also for water pumping and for many for irrigation, in some cases for cash crops, like onions, etc. Which have been watered by hand up until now taking enormous amounts of time. In addition to water pumping the wind project also does battery charging for lighting and ice making and other direct connection applications. And the ice is for preserving fish, mainly along the islands. As I mentioned the program in Nepal is only just starting, Nepal already has quite a successful micro hydro project with 1,500 turbine mills operating. Mainly for direct driven applications, for milling rice, for graining corn, for pressing oil, for mustard seed, etc. And about 500 units also produce electricity. Decentralized what are called mini grids where each village has it's own electrification unit. And these are often privately or community owned and the loans are available from the Agriculture Development Bank. What we are proposing to do is standardize the technology. There are many, many factors making different equipment and as a result when you need a replacement you can use it from a general catalog for example. We are also supporting small producers who have access to electricity in their region to sell to the grid. Because renewable energy projects are available sometimes at inconvenient times but in the case of hydro their available all the time but you don't always have need for them. And so if you can sell the access during the daytime or late at night to the grid this is a way to make projects more economic. Winrock has recently started a gender and leadership initiative. By the way, Sara Tish is right there, if you have further questions about that. That is our gender focus program within Winrock and the renewable energy program is working with Sara's program to introduce renewable energy technologies in gender program and also agriculture programs, rural employment programs, etc. Additionally this program has been focused in Brazil and Central America and it's expanding to other programs in Africa and other places. Now the reasons for linking gender to renewable energy. Women are primary users and managers of household energy and provide significant labor to move water, household fuels, their often times the agroprocessors, making food ready for cooking, etc. And as results have been mentioned development decisions have not always involved them. In certain places women play a key role in agricultural production, this traditionally, like in SubSahara and Africa, in other areas where men have moved to the cities for seasonal migration women have had to take allot of the agricultural burdens. The compelling evidence shows that energy projects like all the rural development projects risk serious failure when they don't take gender factors into account. Depaul has already talked about how women are generally better credit risks, and also provide good investment into family welfare. One interesting thing about renewable energy technologies is their more accessible to women because centralized grids are often times centrally controlled with government and often times, and are more male dominated, women don't really have a large role to play there, and we found this during training in Guatamala for example, where the women that have been trained to maintain solar systems and small renewable energy systems have actually done better in system maintenance. Partly because they are the immediate users often times and know exactly what's wrong and feel it much more strongly. Well what has Winrock done in this initiative that I just talked about. Initially, workshops have been carried out in Guatamala mainly with other NGO's that don't have an energy program of their own, but have a focus on gender. And so programs that do specific clinics or they might even be working in schools and other kinds of activities, they were brought together and basically Winrock during these workshops has explained to them how renewable energy works and would they be interested in incorporating them into their projects and this has met with a lot of success. And um, (Tape Ends)