Making a Living off Renewable Energy in El Salvador

...Yes, it does seem to be possible. Today Victor Cornejo and I went to visit what appears to be a thriving renewable energy business here in San Salvador, SEESA. I had become aware of this company several weeks earlier and attempted unsuccessfully to get in touch with them. This week one of my students who knows someone at SEESA took it upon himself to have another go at connecting us. I wanted to visit the company before the class ends because I'd heard they have some solar hot water and off-grid solar electric installations in or near the capital that I thought might make good field trip destinations.

Victor and I were greeted at SEESA by their chief engineer Roberto Bonilla and one of their staff techs, María del Carmen. Their office/workshop/showroom is in a beautiful hillside location near the south edge of the city. We sat down for an hour and a half to talk about their installations and came up with a plan to see a solar hot water installation at a hospital and an off-grid solar project at an NGO's office on Saturday afternoon, right after our field trip to two sugar processing plants. Will be a long day, but it seems a no-brainer since we already have the students organized, a bus lined up, and Ing. Bonilla is available. He got on the phone and got permission from the system owners. I emailed all the students today to see whether a good chunk of them are in agreement with this plan.

Roberto and María gave us a tour of their facility. It's quite impressive. They have a huge selection of solar electric equipment, thermosiphon hot water systems from Brazil and China, high efficiency DC and AC appliances, and loads of white LED products, including street lights. They also have their own grid tied PV system with battery backup, which uses an interesting inverter setup. There are two SMA inverters, one for grid tie and one for off-grid use. Normally they use the grid inverter with the other unit on standby. When the power goes out, the off-grid unit automatically comes online running off the battery bank. It sends an AC sine wave input to the grid inverter's utility side connection, fooling the grid inverter into thinking it's getting grid power so it doesn't shut off.

María del Carmen and Roberto Bonilla of SEESA with a mockup off-grid mini solar electric system

In the afternoon I had a visit from three high school students who attend a private French liceo. They had visited me the week before to ask for guidance on biodigestors. They came back today to get some documents I'd promised them and to show me a plastic bottle mini-digestor they had put together. Next week they want me to visit their school to see a larger scale digestor they have in the works.

The Liceo students with their handheld bio-digestor

This week Basilia started taking a class on Control de Enfermedades, part of the Universidad Centroamericana's master's program in public health.