We brought our Luz en Casa programme to Panama to offer a sustainable solution of access to electricity to isolated rural communities -preferably located in indigenous regions- having no prospects of conventional electrification (with grid connection).
With this aim, we joined the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (so called AECID) that works since several years ago in the operation area with other projects. This public-private partnership for development brings the necessary technical, managerial, economic and institucional resources to execute the actions. In addition, we currently have the financial support of the National Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation of Panama (SENACYT) for the scaling-up phase that we are executing.
The Luz en Casa Ngäbe-Buglé Programme provides access to a basic electricity service with off-grid renewable sources: third generation solar home systems, which are very efficient, have a plug&play architecture, no pollutant pieces and meet the user energy demand, as well as they are easily transportable due to compacity and low weight; they are a modern and safe solution for very remote households. Thus we provide indigenous families with access to electricity that generates positive impacts on the quality of life in the Ngäbe-Buglé region.
- ACCIONA, working in Panama since 2013, detected the lack of access to basic services in the most isolated rural areas of the country.
- As a complement to its business activity, through which is not possible to reach those populations in the last mile, it involved us as we are its corporate foundation to bring our reliable, sustainable and affordable solutions to those communities.
- After the first analysises, we decided to start by adapting and implementing our access-to-electricity service delivery model in the Ngäbe-Buglé indigenous region, because it is the most underdeveloped one and has the largest lack of access to services in Panama.
- In addition, the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (so called AECID), which is our partner in projects in other countries, already worked in that region so it could provide us with its knowledge and, as it implements projects of access to water & sanitation, sinergies might be developed between us.