Engineers went head to head with village solar techs, or as they called themselves UOPGES, (Units of Operation and Management of Sustainable Energy). After a long day of technical class work and discussions about how to maintain of the nearly 600 solar home systems installed in the jungle, it was time to play soccer. It was 10pm and just getting going. Stadium lights illuminated the concrete platform with makeshift goal posts on each end, and a crowd gathered around for the big showdown. The most amazing thing about the match wasn’t the world-cup quality footwork or header goals, but simply who was playing. In such a stratified society, it was a rare moment to have the leaders from Ecuador’s National Electricity Council (CONELEC-Consejo Nacional de Electricidad) and overeducated professional engineers from the nations’ big electrical companies playing against indigenous villagers who live hours by foot or canoe to the closest road.
What brought them all to Coca, this small city in the Amazon, was the Workshop on Technical and Financial Strengthening for Operators of the UOPGES co-hosted by our local NGO partner, FEDETA (Ecuadorian Foundation for Appropriate Technology) and Green Empowerment. Each morning Michel taught the design, installation and upkeep of solar power systems with class work, and hands-on work assembling solar PV systems. This was a refresher course for the 40 village technicians who have been trained by FEDETA to install and maintain the solar PV systems in their community. They are also responsible for collecting a small fee from each household to build a fund to replace the batteries. The big electrical companies hold the fund, and are then responsible for replacing the batteries and any other parts as needed.
While the systems are managed by the community itself, the PV systems are officially property of the state-owned electrical companies (and paid for by a government fund) and thus they are responsible for making sure that the systems keep providing electrical service in the long term. It is not uncommon to hear of dead solar systems scattered around the developing world because they didn’t have any system of maintaining them, replacing batteries, and fixing them when parts wear out. So, in Ecuador, they are trying to build system maintenance into the whole program. At least that was the mission of this workshop.
Each afternoon, we facilitated discussion groups of UOPGES and electrical company engineers to dialog around what are the roles. Each afternoon was dedicated to hammering out the administrative, social and financial issues. The first day we formed “Mesas de dialogo” (tables of dialog) with a mix of people from the UOPGES and electrical companies. Someone from GE or FEDETA facilitated each group dialog around the roles of the UOPGES and the roles of the companies, and the corresponding problems that are inhibiting them from fulfilling their roles. Each group presented their roles and difficulties in front of the whole group. The process of self-analysis reminded me of Paulo Frerre’s popular education.
The next day, the UOPGES gathered at separate tables from the electrical companies and CONELEC to propose systemic solutions to each of the problems that had been presented the day before. During the presentations of results, the UOPGES, who come from very remote, poor villages spoke with incredible confidence about their demands on the electrical companies. The electrical companies, CONELEC and the Fondo de Solidaridad committed to meeting in the next 2 months to address the problems presented and to begin the process of forming renewable energy departments within the electrical companies responsible for attending to the needs of the UOPGES (maintaining a stock of replacement parts, reviewing accounts, replacing batteries when needed, etc.) The whole process was incredibly participative and encouraged a real and healthy self-assessment of the program and suggestions on what each player needs to do to make it more sustainable. It seemed to be an experiment in real democracy.
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