Facts at a glance:
Project: Micro-hydroelectric System at the Comunidad Nueva Alianza
Community: Comunidad Nueva Alianza, El Palmar, Guatemala
Number of Beneficiaries: 40 families (approx. 200 people)
Installed Capacity: 16KW 

In December 2006, AIDG saw XelaTeco, our first incubated business, through the completion of a $45,000 micro-hydroelectric system for the Comunidad Nueva Alianza (CNA), a community in the Western Highlands of Guatemala.

The 16KW system was partially funded by the United Nations Development Program. It is now providing the CNA's 40 families (approx. 200 people) with electricity in their homes for the first time as well as renewable energy for their income-generating projects.

Xelateco locally manufactured many of the complex components, including the electronic ballast load controllers and Pelton turbines.  The team was also responsible for laying the penstock and connecting the electric transmission wires to all the homes.

Background of the Comunidad Nueva Alianza

The Comunidad Nueva Alianza is a relatively young worker owned plantation about an hour south of Xela with an amazing history (watch a quicktime movie AIDG helped prepare on Nueva Alianza). In 1998 the plantation underwent some extreme financial duress due to mismanagement. The workers, in some families the third generation of workers living at the Finca, were not paid wages for a period of 18 months. The workers subsisted by gathering wild plants while the farm went into default. The workers sued the owner for the back wages in an effort to raise the capital necessary to buy the farm back from the financial group. The owner declared bankruptcy and failed to pay the wages. The workers obtained a development loan and are now purchasing from the bank the land their families have lived on for generations. The farm has numerous new enterprises it is attempting to raise the capital necessary to buy back the farm. They are running an ecotourist center, have tapped and are bottling spring water, and harvest organic macadamia nuts, coffee, and Hass avocados. The AIDG has previously installed two biogas systems for their cow and pig operations, in addition to a solar water heating system.