**5. Research and development**

The CEDECAP has real-size facilities that are used both for training and for research purposes. It is especially relevant that real-size equipment allow very applied and practical research. Moreover, improvements and technical developments can be tested in the CEDECAP before moving on to real projects to ensure that their performance in field will be appropriate and reliable. Next, we present the main reach lines that have been developed involving wind electrification systems, household bio-digesters and methodologies for developing rural electrification plans.

#### **5.1 Wind electrification systems**

It is worth to mention the research carried out in relation to small wind turbines. In 1998, ITDG began a long-term research study focused on taking advantage of small wind energy to generate electricity for poor rural families in three countries: Peru, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Wind turbines were designed under the concept of appropriate technology: they should be

When developing renewable energies modules, Practical Action's technical team participated getting involved as specialist teachers in different subjects. Students have done training to do the maintenance and the conceptual development. Practical lessons were carried out in the CEDECAP's facilities. The courses were conducted with the active participation of students, and at the end of the training, they were able to install or maintain an energy provision system. Another prominent theme of working together has been the construction and operation of a bio-digester in the CEFOP. In this line, the program covered from the background knowledge to the installation of the bio-digester, as well as identified the capacities and abilities for the installation of this tool. This work was carried out under

Since 2005 until today, the CEDECAP has allowed the development of many training


3 international courses and 1 virtual course on renewable energies. 18 regional courses and workshops related to renewable energies. 15 workshops and internships on rural electrification planning.



The CEDECAP has real-size facilities that are used both for training and for research purposes. It is especially relevant that real-size equipment allow very applied and practical research. Moreover, improvements and technical developments can be tested in the CEDECAP before moving on to real projects to ensure that their performance in field will be appropriate and reliable. Next, we present the main reach lines that have been developed involving wind electrification systems, household bio-digesters and methodologies for

It is worth to mention the research carried out in relation to small wind turbines. In 1998, ITDG began a long-term research study focused on taking advantage of small wind energy to generate electricity for poor rural families in three countries: Peru, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Wind turbines were designed under the concept of appropriate technology: they should be

the coordination between students and CEFOP teachers.

**4.4 Summary of the realized activities** 

energies promoters. The courses are:

5 workshops on bio-digesters.

9 presentations. 1 training report. 9 hand-outs. 3 user's manual.

**5. Research and development** 

developing rural electrification plans.

**5.1 Wind electrification systems** 

activities:

simple, cheap, reliable, easy to maintain and, above all, achievable through local workshops or microenterprises with a minimum of imported materials and components (Schumacher, 1973). In the case of Peru, the developed turbines were specifically designed to operate at low-moderate wind speeds that predominate in Andean Peru. In August 2006, a meeting between Practical Action (International Programs and Latin America's Office), Engineers Without Borders – Catalonia and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) was celebrated in Cajamarca (Peru). At that meeting the three entities established and promoted the groundwork for the design of an international program called "Development and Dissemination of Micro Wind Energy Generation Systems in Developing Countries (Micro-WEGS)", whose main coordinator was Teodoro Sánchez, the technologies and policies consultant of Practical Action.

Until now, two different models have been developed: the IT-PE-100 operates with wind speeds from 3.5 m/s to 12 m/s, and produces 100W at 6.5 m/s, and the SP-500 that produces 500W at 8 m/s. Both models are furling tail turbines with three fiberglass blades and axial permanent magnet generators. At the same time, a local company was created to manufacture the wind turbines in Lima, thereby stimulating business creation and facilitating repair and parts replacement. So far, these models have already been used in the electrification of three communities in Peru (Ferrer-Martí et al, 2010). Moreover, these designs and technology were transferred to Bolivia. A Peruvian team from Practical Action went to Bolivia to impart theoretical bases of the designs and how to manufacture them in NGOs (Prodener, CINER) and universities (Universidad de San Simon, Universidad de San Antonio Abad). In this sense, research studies continue to improve the mechanical aspects checking the design, materials and manufacturing processes to improve the general performance of the wind turbine from the queue system redesign and to improve its robustness against non-constant winds, trying to influence the vibration's control. In parallel, control systems are being developed to optimize generator's performance (Colet-Subirachs et al, 2010) and low-cost monitoring systems, to record and characterize the operation of all the equipment.

Moreover, some research studies are being developed for the optimization of the design of the projects, studying the location of the generators and the use of possible distribution microgrids. Due to the characteristic dispersion between households in the villages, the projects tend to install individual wind turbines at each demand point. However, the projects that combine individual generators and microgrids have proven to be beneficial: this design option considers the use of more powerful turbines, economically advantageous, and does not constraint the energy of a demand point to its location. The objective of these studies is to develop a decision models to design wind electrification projects, taking into account the location of the demand points, the detailed wind resource map and the possible use of micro grids. The wind resource at each point of the village is calculated using specialized software (Ferrer-Martí et al, submitted).

Mixed and integer linear programming (MILP) models have been developed to solve the design of the wind electrification project and gives the location and size or type of the wind turbines systems, the batteries, the charge controllers, the inverters, and the wires to be used in the micro grids (Ferrer-Martí et al, 2011). This type of mathematical formulation is used to model combinatorial problems, and can be solved optimally using specialized software. As input data, we introduce the location, the energy, and the power demand of each point, as

Promoting and Improving Renewable Energy Projects Through Local Capacity Development 165

manure management techniques, increasing the organic loading rate and co-digesting other substrates to enhance the process. Taking into account the low biogas potential of cow manure compared to other cattle dung, next studies analyses if the process was enhanced by co-digestion with other manure and food or vegetable wastes. Moreover, agricultural reuse of the digestate from low-cost tubular digesters as fertilizer is being analyzed (Garfi et al, in

CEDECAP aims to become a reference node in the Andean region in training in rural electrification and in the rational and efficient use of energy, in terms of disseminating

The CEDECAP has a library, which has technical documents about non-conventional energies and all the material generated in the events and training processes. Recently, the website has been updated to provide technical consulting service in addition to supplying information (documents, papers, reports). CEDECAP's website is independent from Practical Action's website, and until December 2009, 650 people had visited it. However, the

The international courses on projects and systems design are a meeting place for NGOs, universities (students and teachers) and professional technicians. In addition, workshops that are organized around specific themes are the meeting point for civil society, universities, administration, private sector and government. In this sense, conversations with OLADE (Ecuador), that has 26 countries as partners, were initiated. Together with the organization, a virtual international course in micro hydroelectric power plants (both technical and management) was made using the OLADE platform. The alliance with OLADE allowed the groups to count on support to find demand in Latin America. Virtual courses are taken by OLADE as a success because the interesting and virtually forced subject reaches to 26 countries. For the CEDECAP the link is valuable because the institution has been recognized as a visible organization with expertise in the field of renewable energies. In particular, developing courses in a virtual platform (OLADE, 2008) allows not only training people from very different geographical areas, but also providing opportunities for participatory group learning with people of different cultures and personal and professional

Promoting the CEDECAP means trying to promote networking, social connectivity, exchange and interaction between different actors involved in sustainable development in the region. Moreover, among the innovative aspects of CEDECAP, it is worth to mention the opportunity to break the paradigm that technology transfer is always from north to south. This project strengthens and promotes South-North and South-South transfers. In this sense, the center aims to create new spaces to canalize and share knowledge, and create new synergies between different actors in the public or private development, both South and

website does not allow the user to connect directly to a specialist, but only indirectly.

press).

**6. Information and advocacy node** 

information and promoting networking.

**6.1 Information center** 

experiences.

North.

**6.2 Networking center** 

well as the detailed map of the wind and solar potential of the village and the costs and technical characteristics of the equipment. As constraints, we introduce the technical characteristics and relation between the generation, storage and distribution equipment. Moreover, social constraints to consider social characteristics of the village and to improve the performance of the system from a social point of view are also introduced. Recently, models have been extended to consider hybrid systems with wind and photovoltaic generators (Ranaboldo et al, submitted) and micro hydraulic systems.
