SOLARAWARDS2011 SHOR TLISTED
the supply and installation of the systems, which is a common practice, but also requiring a contractual commitment for the development of a sustainability programme, to assure the operation and management of the systems for 15 years. The project has been developed by the Interamerican Development Bank (from here on BID) and the National Energy Commission (from here on CNE), and requires the amount of 1,040,000 USD of which the BID provides 85% to the CNE through subsidies and the remaining 15% is obtained from the tariff charged to the end users.
Project organization For the correct management of the project for these 15 years it was decided to create a consortium formed by the companies ISOFOTON S.A., TECNOSOL and the NGO PANA-PANA, the last two are located in Nicaragua where the project is being carried out. The project is being carried out in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN), in 31 communities situated along the shore of the Coco River, the natural border between Nicaragua and Honduras and one of the poorest areas in the country.
The area is inhabited by the Miskita tribe, which has its own language (Miskito) and whose knowledge of Spanish is directly proportional to their proximity to the town of WASPAM. They have a subsistence economy based on the harvest of different crops, frijoles, rice and bananas in two annual harvests in April and September. Their crop fields are often in the Honduran area, due to the quality of the land on the other side of the river, however, it is an artificial frontier that divides the Miskita nation and therefore they do not consider it as such.
This short summary has described some of the characteristics of the inhabitants who are the focus of this project. These characteristics are common to many of the areas where this kind of project is implemented, i.e. a subsistence economy based on agriculture, minimum income that is dependent on harvests, with no integration in the government-generated structures in their respective countries, where everyone non Miskito who has the privilege of visiting the area is called Spanish! We will now summarize the components of the consortium and its qualities to carry out this project.
ISOFOTON is responsible for supplying the equipment and the technical management of the installations.
TECNOSOL, official distributor of ISOFOTON in Nicaragua, is responsible for the installation of the solar equipment and systems, under our training and supervision, and it will also be responsible for the supply of all the Balance of the system, wires, switches, lamps (all this material must be local in order to obtain spare parts relatively easily).
PANA-PANA, NGO for the management of microcredits and aid for the inhabitants of the project areas, is responsible for the initial sensitiveness surveys to find users, the creation of the local lighting committees together with the TECNOSOL installers around the area, and the later management of payments from the beneficiaries. Founded in 1991, PanaPana has a large prestige across the whole installation area, which is very important to establish the necessary links with the beneficiaries. They will be responsible for all dealings with the beneficiaries.
Two of their specialized technicians will be responsible for maintaining the systems. Before starting the installations, they will carry out surveys to evaluate the payment capacities of the possible users. The basis of the operation and maintenance of the systems is the creditworthiness of these users. Are they capable of assuring minimum annual funds to interest companies in creating an infrastructure around the systems? We believe so, and in any case, the study was carried out conscientiously in order to estimate their real creditworthiness, their level of commitment and maintenance of the system. The results show limited creditworthiness and a certain level of debts and arrears. However, as already mentioned, the 5 USD, which they can easily pay each month (their current expense on radio batteries, candles and kerosene for burning is around 7 USD per month).
The user has also the possibility of making just 2 payments per year coinciding with income from crop sales.
ISOFOTON provides its experience in implementing a project of this kind as it has installed several hundred systems
around the world, however, it also provides financial resources to cover delays in payments (common in these projects) and initial disbursements to cover the project, trips to the area to prepare the offer and meet fellow team members, meetings, etc.
TECNOSOL provides the consortium with its knowledge of the country as well as the entire capacity of its company, warehouses, workforce and office material. TECNOSOL will become the logistic and bureaucratic centre of the project during the Installation phase, however, once all the systems are installed, the consortium office at WASPAM will also start operating, although the neuralgic centre will still be run by TECNOSOL from its office in Managua. As well as this, TECNOSOL has also provided its installation staff, nearly all of whom have over 5 years’ experience in solar installations.
Operation experience Assuring the quality of the equipment installed is essential for the sustainability and viability of the project, due to the fee paid by the user comprises the replacement of the equipment, as well as the cost of the local infrastructure (an office in WASPAM, furniture, rent, staff cost, their travelling expenses), and the recovery of the 15 % that is not subsidised. Due to the absence of long- term studies about components failures rates on installed systems, this data is quite vague; however, we will use our own experience to try to work it out.
After the first 6 months of the installation, when we should have detected all the equipment with manufacturing faults or breakage during transport (regulators 0.9 %, modules 0.05 %, batteries 1%, lamps 1.5%), we consider the working life of the equipment to be as follows: Modules: 20 years (assuring 80 % of their nominal power by the end of the 20 years and that they will continue to work) and therefore spare parts will not be considered. Regulators: Annual breakage rate 6.5 %, therefore, we will have to change all the regulators during the 15 years the system will be in operation.
Batteries: We consider a working life of 6 years per battery; therefore, we will change them twice in the 15 years. The battery is deep cycle with a daily design discharge depth of 15 %. The lamps must
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