Las Mercedes Intibucá, Honduras

A team of 4 Solar Under the Sun colleagues traveled to Las Mercedes Intibucá, Honduras January 8-15 in partnership with the Cooperstown, NY Living Waters for the World team.

Las Mercedes Intibucá is a village in the mountains about an hour away from La Esperanza. There are 49 families living there and we estimated the total population to be around 200. Our pre-trip was in January 2018 with the LWW team and we all signed covenant agreements approving the project.

The project was very straight forward with the only issue being rain and muddy conditions which forced us to shorten our work days so we could get back to our hotel in La Esperanza before dark. This caused the solar team to take an extra half day for the installation but was not a big issue.

On the last day we visited the village of Guanacaste which is about an hour and a half the other way out of La Esperanza. This community has been adopted by a Friends of Honduras, Inc. out of Ballwin, MO near St. Louis. They are all about community development in this village.

Guanacaste is an interesting scenario for solar because there is electricity in the center of the village but there are about 80 homes that are not able to connect to the local grid. These homes are a bit remote. We visited several and discussed the possibility of installing solar in the homes with a monetary commitment from each of the homeowners to be determined. We would need to do an extensive survey of each home to assure that there is enough sun light available for the solar panels. We estimate the survey trip would take around a week for two Solar1s.

The other big issue would be the total cost and we feel this would be a multi-year project in order to raise the necessary funds. Dave and Duke are in discussions on how to reduce the average cost of around $1,000 per home to $500. One of the major costs is the pole and mount for the solar panel at around $400. They hope to figure out a solution soon.

Dave, Duke and Roy visited Soluz Energia Solar in San Pedro Sula on our last day, which is actually owned by a US firm. We spent over two hours discussing different options with local expert and this helped Dave and Duke to refine their thinking on cost reductions.

If you would like more details on the trip please let us know.