Provide electricity to 500 students in Belize

Progress in fund-raising for our second solar array has kicked off to benefit the students that attend Holy Cross Anglican primary school in San Mateo, Belize. Even though it is located on a "tourist' island, San Mateo is one of the poorest communities in all of Belize, with lack of clean water, sanitary sewage, and reliable electricity contributing along with sub-standard housing and incomplete roads. Families not only lack access to basic living necessities, they lack the resources needed to provide adequate nutrition and medical/dental care to their children.

In the meantime, our current 24-panel 5kW array continues to provide savings equivalent of about $3000USD per year, or about $250USD a month -- money that is being used to support our feeding program. The feeding program involves serving the equivalent of two nutritious meals a day to students that would otherwise not have access to the nutrition needed to grow and thrive.

Our second array will be located atop the primary school building and will enable both the school office itself (which is not affected by the current array) and the school cafeteria, kitchen, classrooms, and associated appliances to benefit from renewable energy.When installed, this would enable a nearly 30% offset in total school annual power bills including both meters, for an annual savings of about $6,000USD.

The Phase 2 array can be fully funded for about $28,800 ($33,120 including GG 15% re-coup) including purchase of 24 210W panels and associated hardware, shipping/customs, labor, bi-directional meter costs/installation, and ancillary or unanticipated expenses. This amounts to $1200 ($1380) per panel. Our base-line donation level is $28,855 raised during Phase 1; as of this report we have raised $3610 toward our Phase 2 goal, which is a good start!

Our next site visit will be in late March/early April of 2013. At that time project leaders including engineers from Baker Renewable Energy -- our solar panel contractor -- will conduct a review of Phase 2 project plans including proposed location and integration aspects with the Phase 1 solar array.