Wind generator that empowers lives

Oscar Pagoada and Javier Cceres, friends who worked together to build a prototype wind generator without backgrounds in engineering, have been able to reduce utility costs for rural communities in eastern Honduras and bring much-needed electricity to a healthcare center.

Sitting among the green hills of eastern Honduras, where the strong winds carry the aroma of the best coffee in the world, is the town of El Paraso. This is the home of the two unassuming men who have created energy out of what most people would call trash in a country in the throes of an energy crisis.

Pagoada and Cceres, driven by their passion for electronics and their motivation to help others, built the wind-powered generator using bits of wood, scrap metal and magnets from microwave ovens that were sitting idle due to an energy rationing plan affecting the nation. After enduring 12-hour blackouts in remote Honduran communities that do not have ready access to electricity, the two put their idea into action.

"We must learn to live from nature's resources, obtaining sustenance from nature. We created energy through the use of magnets - out of some coils and wood we built a generator that works with wind or water. We generated electrical currents out of those elements and we've been able to help our community by using things that people consider waste," Pagoada said.

He said what also spurred the idea were his monthly electricity bills, which came to as much as 1,200 lempiras ($52.70). After receiving the bill, he knew it was time to get to work.

Once he built and installed the generator at home, his $52.80 bill dropped to $26.30. Pagoada then contacted Cceres, a man with a quiet and reserved nature, strong hands and a large heart.

"We take advantage of metal refuse and whatever is on hand. We get together to see what needs to be done and since I work with metals, I can use leftover materials ... to build the generators," said Cceres, who is in charge of assembling the generators. "That's why it's not a big financial investment, yet it helps many people. We're a poor country and we must help one another."

The winds blow strong in El Paraso and for these two friends each gust represents power.

"We had the materials and finished it in 15 days, installing it on top of a hill to generate a radio signal for the environmental station," said Cceres.

The first time they saw the generator working, they said it "made us happy because we knew it would be of great help".

Healthcare in the dark

News travels fast in a small village, especially when it comes to saving money in a community where, for two months every year, coffee production is the only means of survival.

Little by little people in other towns started hearing about the two men who collected refuse in their free time and made electricity from it. Everyone thought it unusual, and perhaps impossible.

Outside El Paraso, in a place called El Gamalotal, there is a healthcare center with a capacity to help 100 people that sits empty because of a lack of electricity. Since there was nowhere to keep medical supplies refrigerated, children were not receiving their vaccines and on the days it was possible to provide care it was the sun that dictated when appointments would end.

The author is a freelancer at Sparknews, a social impact amplifier between innovation and leading medias.

(China Daily 06/25/2016 page10)