Provide electricity to 500 students in Belize

Dear All,

Thanks to so many of you for your continued support of our solar project in Belize. As renewables become ever more needed... and as a meteorologist that understands the immense challenges that global warming presents to human society ... I am extremely grateful that solar is a primary priority at Holy Cross Anglican Public School in Belize (HCAS).

I just returned from a visit as part of a volunteer team. We worked on the front facing "porch" decking and also on the roofing for our New Community Center. (The Community Center is built on 8-foot above grade concrete pylons, due to increasing flood-waters in the rainy season and frequent tropical storms in the fall). But, the first day of my trip was occupied by my visit to our solar energy provider, SESB, located near the capital city of Belmopan. There, we met to develop plans to significantly increase our solar footprint at HCAS (picture 1).

Following the Monday visit, SESB sent an expert technician out to HCAS, which is located in the impoverished San Mateo community near San Pedro Belize. "Dee" came out on Wednesday. Myself, "Dee", and "Mr. Freddy" (the on-site carpenter extraordinaire) surveyed the entire existing system ( actually dubbed Systems 1 and 3 ), focusing on expandability (pictures 2,3, and 4). Following that survey, we then looked at the new Community Center (pictures 5 and 6). The goal is to provide "as much solar as is possible" for the entire campus, not solely for renewable energy reasons, but also to continue to assist the community in becoming fully self-reliant. Unfortunately, as far as we can see, the cost of purchasing energy from the grid remains too high for the school and community center to manage going forward.

Overall, our goal is to offset as much as 70% of what the electricity without solar would cost. (In our case, battery backup is just not financially feasible -- unless a very generous donor were to come forward).

Within a week of my return home, SESB provided initial quotes for the upgrades to the existing systems 1 and 3, and a separate quote for what we plan to install on the New Community Center.

These are very exciting times at Holy Cross. Not only are our dreams of providing a multipurpose meeting space being realized (it will be used for advocacy, social services, storm shelter, and more classroom space), but our dreams and needs for solar are growing with it. In fact, tropical countries are ideal locations for SRE. This is because they vary little in solar angle, which is guaranteed to be quasi-vertical (especially deep in the tropics), and even in the rainy season, more solar energy "leaks" through cloudy skies.

Hence, at this time and moving forward, your donations could not be more important. Please invite friends, colleagues, acquaintenances to consider this project as an important, though local, contributor to the fight against human induced climate change.

Most sincerely,

John