In August 2018, ten employees from IGS Energy will travel with GRID Alternatives' International Program to the rural community of Colon Abajo in the Jinotega region of Nicaragua to work alongside farmers Andrés and Mayra Avelino Chavarria and their family to install a solar-powered drip irrigation system on their land. The system will utilize a solar-powered water pump to move water from a water source into an elevated tank, which is then distributed through a network of irrigation tubing to their crops through gravity drip by drip. The installation activities will include mounting solar panels to power the pump, connecting the pump, preparing the water storage tank, digging trenches for the irrigation tubes, and wiring the load controllers.
Small farmers in Nicaragua face a number of chcallenges. Many farmers rely on diesel-powered or gasoline-powered motors to pump water to their crops, which is very costly, polluting, and time consuming for the farmer to travel to obtain fuel. Those who cannot afford a generator irrigate their crops by hauling water in buckets by hand from a well or nearby river. In both cases, watering crops in the dry season is difficult due to the hot climate and lack of water accessibility, limiting the farmer's annual yield.
Connecting to grid electricity is often too expensive and unreliable for rural farmers. These challenges have been magnified in the face of a severe multi-year drought. By using solar-powered drip irrigation systems, farmers can save money, use water more efficiently, increase crop yields, reduce local pollution, add more locally grown produce to the market, improve the quality of their lives by having more disposable income to send their children to school, make improvement to their home, and get their crops to the local market faster. The drip irrigation system will provide water for fruit and vegetable crops to help improve the lives of the Chavarria family by increasing crop production, saving time, and increasing income.
This project is sponsored by IGS, and is part of a larger three-year partnership with GRID Alternatives. IGS launched an internal philanthropic initiative called IGS Impact Renewable Energy Corps, which has sent two groups of employees to Nicaragua to participate in GRID Alternatives projects since October 2016. Multi-year partnerships like IGS' are critical in enabling GRID to bring the benefits of solar- financial savings, job opportunities, and a clean, renewable energy source- to famililes and communities that owuld not otherwise have access. Learn more about becoming a corporate sponsor for our international projects.
