Eight years ago, when ACCIONA Microenergia got Peru, Luis Bautista, who lives in the locality of Chiriconga, in the Namora district, was one of the first users to be attended by Luz en Casa. Nowadays, this rural electrification programme provides modern and safe electricity, with solar home systems, to more than 100 localities of south Cajamarca department.

About four years ago, Luis was trained to work as a local technician to install solar home systems for ACCIONA Microenergia Peru and, since then, he also gives maintenance services. Later, in 2015, he and his wife were trained to own a micro franchise “Centro Luz en Casa”, and so have the opportunity of becoming businesspeople too. Entrepreneurs like Luis, besides technical training, have taken training on sales, accounting and management of their businesses.

By means of the implementation of the Centro Luz en Casa-Chiriconga, Luis has increased his income and, thus, he is improving his family quality of life, offering his children a better education and the chance of having a better future.

It is an example that allows seeing the impact of synergies between electrification and entrepreneurship projects, which can transform the life of the population of isolated rural areas, by offering them sustainable jobs that can contribute to their development in the short and medium term.

ACCIONA Microenergia and the Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are included in the 2030 Agenda, a 15-year plan of action that favours the people, the planet and the prosperity. There are 17 SDG which are integrated and indivisible and that comprise the three dimensions of the Development: economic, social and environmental.

The rural electrification programmes of the ACCIONA Microenergia Foundation impact on those three dimensions, and directly on the SDG 7, Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.

With the ‘Centros Luz en Casa’, the SDG 8, Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all, is impacted too: these centres are owned, under a micro franchise model, by users of the Luz en Casa Oaxaca programme who have been trained technical, entrepreneurial and managerially so as to sell electric devices and offer other technical services to rural communities as independent professionals, and thus generate income for their families.

ACCIONA Microenergia Peru

It is a non-profit association that was created by the ACCIONA Microenergia foundation to facilitate access to electricity to isolated rural communities, which are not included in the national grid extension of Peru. It develops the ‘Luz en Casa’ programme in the Northern Mountains of Peru, in the department of Cajamarca, where it is an electricity public utility within the Peruvian regulation, and with a fee-for-service model that applies the official photovoltaic tariff. It has recently deployed the pilot project of ‘Luz en Casa Amazonia’ in the Napo river basin (Napo district, province of Maynas, department of Loreto) with the aim of validating a sustainable and scalable technological and management delivery model in the Peruvian Amazonia. Nowadays, it starts a new project to extend the action to the rest of the Napo river basin.