SAN MIGEL TOPILEJO, Mexico, Sep 26 (IPS) – Verónica Molina, an indigenous Comcaac lady, first got here into contact with photo voltaic power in 2016, when she travelled to India for coaching on communal photovoltaic amenities. This later enabled her to participate within the set up of the primary photo voltaic techniques and household vegetable gardens in her group, Desemboque del Seri, in northern Mexico.
Afterward, she was invited to the mission Energy, Water and Food Security for Indigenous Peoples in Semi-Arid Coastal Regions of Northern Mexico, sponsored by the governmental Nationwide Council of Humanities, Science and Expertise (Conahcyt), which started in 2022.
“We plant greens, as a result of there aren’t any different seeds to make use of. They’re for self-consumption. With the panels, we pay much less for power, and with the gardens we get monetary savings on greens,” the photo voltaic activist informed IPS from Desemboque del Seri, some 1,900 kilometres from Mexico Metropolis.
Along with producing their very own electrical energy, the collaborating households harvest quite a lot of greens in Desemboque and neighbouring Punta Chueca, Comcaac territories inhabited by some 1,200 folks on the coast of the state of Sonora, and one among Mexico’s 69 indigenous peoples, who additionally fish.
Whereas the panels cowl between 25% and 75% of a family’s consumption, every of the greater than 40 household gardens supplies between 100 and 200 kilograms of greens for every of the 2 annual harvest seasons.
The area suffers from marginalisation, poverty and illness. In distinction, it receives a day by day photo voltaic irradiation of 5.9 kWh/m2 and an annual rainfall of 200 millilitres, which makes seasonal agriculture troublesome.
The initiative consists of a hybrid system that mixes photovoltaic technology and meals manufacturing, situated beneath the panels to harness the solar, shade and dew that they seize in the course of the evening, which is in vogue in international locations similar to Germany, Brazil and the US.
This eco-technology continues to be in its infancy in Mexico, and it’s unknown what number of techniques are in operation within the nation. The Mexican Agrovoltaic Network is making ready a census to find out their standing.
In truth, the Strategic Plan on Local weather Change for the Agri-Meals Sector contains amongst its targets using photo voltaic panels for electrical energy technology.
Mitigation
“We realised that that they had well being, financial system, meals, and land points. We appeared for complete options, aligned with the price range. They’ve the ocean or the desert, it is a particularly arid place,” Rodolfo Peón informed IPS from Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora.
“We noticed that agriculture was an alternative choice to enhance their weight loss program and supply electrical energy,” added the researcher from the Division of Industrial Engineering on the public College of Sonora, referring to the mission within the Comcáac territory.
That is how the agrovoltaic scheme, the one low-cost resolution for the world, got here on the scene.
Funded by Conahcyt’s Nationwide Strategic Programmes with some 450,000 {dollars}, the mission addresses the elements of power, water, meals, well being, biodiversity and territorial defence.
Since 2018, the federal government has been driving, with little success, for inner capability (sovereignty) in meals manufacturing for Mexico’s inhabitants of some 130 million folks.
Mexico at present ranks eleventh on the planet in meals manufacturing. Throughout the first seven months of this yr it exported extra agri-foods than in the identical interval final yr, though it additionally purchased extra, albeit in an agricultural steadiness with a surplus.
The nation is very susceptible to the results of the local weather disaster, similar to drought, rising temperatures and the unfold of pests.
In consequence, producers of maize, beans, wheat, espresso and different conventional merchandise are already struggling the impacts of phenomena similar to this yr’s acute water shortages, and can undergo much more unfavourable impacts in the long run, with penalties for high quality of life, earnings and the agricultural atmosphere.
Latin America’s second largest financial system has round six million rural manufacturing models, of which 75% are lower than 5 hectares in measurement and solely 6% have greater than 20 hectares, supporting some 20 million folks.
As well as, 79% of electrical energy technology will depend on fossil fuels, adopted by wind (7%), photovoltaic (4.5%), hydroelectric (4.4%) and nuclear (3.7%). In response to the Electricity Transition Law, the nation ought to generate 35% of its electrical energy from various sources by 2024, however this can be a distant aim.
The administration of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which started in December 2018 and can finish on 1 October, put the brakes on energy transition with a purpose to strengthen the state-owned Federal Electrical energy Fee, which burns fuel for electrical energy technology, and Petróleos Mexicanos, thus favouring fossil fuels.
The nation has agrovoltaic potential, with 20 million hectares of land beneath cultivation and greater than 10,000 megawatts of photovoltaic energy, 70% of which is in in depth amenities.
Hybrid experiments
At a top of 4 metres, six modules of photovoltaic panels seize photo voltaic power which, after passing by a converter, shall be reworked into electrical energy. Sheltered by them, 24 beds home pumpkin, lettuce and tomato crops, which profit from protecting shade, and rainwater and evening dew caught by the panels.
This takes place within the Sustainable and Instructional Agrovoltaic Plot (Pase), situated in a nook of the Heart for Sensible Instructing and Analysis in Animal Manufacturing and Well being of the College of Veterinary Drugs and Animal Science of the general public Nationwide Autonomous College of Mexico (UNAM).
The centre is situated in San Miguel Topilejo, a city within the municipality of Tlalpan, within the south of Mexico Metropolis.
On the facility visited by IPS, on the opposite facet of a mud street, stalled cattle graze whereas the photovoltaic system waits for the overcast skies to open up and bathe them within the solar’s nourishing rays.
On one facet of the plot there are six extra open-air beds to check the outcomes with these protected by the panels.
Throughout an earlier tour of the ability, Aarón Sánchez, a tutorial on the Unam’s Institute of Renewable Energies and coordinator of the plot, defined that they’re learning how crops develop beneath a photovoltaic roof that generates electrical energy.
He defined that they analyse their efficiency when there’s a transpiration course of within the decrease a part of the crops themselves, and the modules work at a decrease temperature and better effectivity.
Inaugurated in 2023, the Pase goals to extend the standard and amount of agricultural merchandise, generate inexperienced power, cut back water consumption, and socialise new applied sciences amongst farmers.
The plot, which has a rainwater harvesting system with a 145 cubic metre tank to feed the drip irrigation system and temperature and humidity sensors, additionally entails the Mexico Metropolis authorities’s Ministry of Schooling, Science, Expertise and Innovation.
A global consortium of establishments from the US, France, Israel, Kenya, Morocco and Mexico can also be collaborating.
Again in Sonora, Molina and Peón referred to as for extra assist to develop the techniques.
“We will ask for extra assist, as a result of some households in the neighborhood haven’t had entry to the agrovoltaic backyard. Hopefully the mission could be continued”, the group photovoltaic skilled stated.
Peón believes the outcomes are promising, however a lot stays to be carried out.
“We hope that there shall be a federal programme to assist indigenous peoples. There must be a change within the guidelines of the sport (for folks to generate their very own power in better volumes),” he stated.
“There must be synergy between the power and agricultural sectors, in order that we are able to see large-scale initiatives”, he added.
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
