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Judi Lynn

(160,214 posts)
Mon Oct 21, 2019, 11:45 PM Oct 2019

Solar Energy Transforms Villages in Argentina's Puna Highlands


By Daniel Gutman



Residents of San Francisco, a community of just 54 people in Argentina's Puna region, stand next to solar panels that began to operate in early October, supplying all their electricity and providing them with street lighting for the first time. It is the fourth completely solar town in the province of Jujuy, on the border with Bolivia and Chile. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS


SANTA CATALINA/SUSQUES, Argentina, Oct 22 2019 (IPS) - “On moonless nights it was very difficult to walk around this town,” says Celia Vilte, a teacher from San Francisco, a highlands village of just 54 people in the extreme northwest of Argentina whose centre is not a town square but 40 solar panels, which provide one hundred percent of its electricity.

To get to San Francisco from La Quiaca, a city on the border with Bolivia, you have to drive about two hours along the desolate dirt roads of the Puna, a highlands ecosystem of yellow grass where no trees grow and where the rivers run dry most of the year.

But since early October it is no longer necessary to arrive by day to see the village from afar, because now San Francisco has LED street lighting which, thanks to renewable energy, lights up the adobe buildings at night in this village located at 3800 metres altitude in the municipality of Santa Catalina.

“We were used to candles and lanterns. Because I get scared, I didn’t go out at night,” says Vilte, who has been a teacher for 20 years in the primary school which now has 13 students.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/10/solar-energy-transforms-villages-argentinas-puna-highlands/
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