Solar energy for families in Santo Domingo, Panama

Two locals proudly inspect the solar panel they just installed with our team’s supervision. In December 2007, we traveled to Santo Domingo’s neighbor community Santa Librada and installed solar panels at the school and church to power lights and a refrigerator. The refrigerator preserves food that mothers cook for school children. The lights will change things, too—for instance, when the traveling doctor visits, he’ll be able to work longer and help more people because he’ll have light.

The newly formed Santa Librada solar committee begins installation of the solar panels. The community members are extremely skilled in construction. They built a frame to mount the panel and keep it a few inches off the roof (which maximizes efficiency), and also built shelves for indoor system components and mounted all the wiring. Santo Domingo’s solar committee showed similar cleverness and dexterity in designing and constructing the physical layout of the system.

Team member Suelyn Yu demonstrates to Santa Librada’s solar committee how the wiring of the first solar panel system should be done. After that, the community members installed the second system with supervision from our team. The two separate systems powered the lights and the refrigerator we installed at the school and church. The buildings were so close that we could use an extension cord to power lights in the church using the systems installed at the school.

On the roof of the school, part of the Santa Librada solar committee admires the new solar panel system. The school and church are situated at the center of the community, and function as a gathering place since houses are so far apart (i.e. some people live an hour’s walk from the school). When the community has visitors such as the traveling priest, the doctor, or representatives of local organizations, families stay at the school overnight and the women cook for everyone.