Rehabilitation of Solar Home Systems and Sustainable Development for an Island Community in Ecuador

Roughly 1 billion people in the world live in energy-deprived environments, mainly in rural or island communities often in developing countries. Technical, economical and geographical constraints are common challenges that communities face around the world for the lack of electrical coverage. This paper describes the rehabilitation of solar home systems and the sustainable development of an island community in the Gulf of Guayaquil in Ecuador. Cerrito de los Morreños is a community located 28 miles south of Guayaquil with a population of approximately 900 inhabitants. Access to electricity is provided using a 195 kW diesel generator only for 6 hours during the day. Previous projects had implemented solar home systems in the community, but lack of training on the use and maintenance of these systems left them non functional. With the support of the IEEE SIGHT program, a group of students and faculty from Villanova University and ESPOL University visited the community on several occasions to assess the opportunities for energy access using the existing infrastructure. The engagement with the community, as well as capacity building, are at the core of the intervention in order to ensure the sustainable development of the project with the stakeholders in the community. The achievements and lessons learned through the rehabilitation of solar home systems and workshops with the community are reported in this paper.