Solar Thermal Project Provides Hot Water to Quilpué School

The Luis Cruz Martínez School in Quilpué, a school with a high level of vulnerability, installed a solar panel system to supply renewable energy to its library and other community areas on the campus. Then, its members went a step further and installed solar thermal panels in the bathrooms for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children, generating a series of benefits that extended to the entire community.

Quilpué, the so-called “City of the Sun”, is located in the Valparaíso Region of central Chile. It is the third most populated municipality in the region, behind the communes of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. In the summer, Quilpué enjoys long, hot, sunny days. This small municipality has a calm atmosphere and pace. In the Belloto Norte sector is the Luis Cruz Martínez School, a municipal facility with a high vulnerability index that for ten years has been seeking to incorporate environmental sustainability transversally into its routines and daily life.

Although this school is connected to the electrical grid, the school community decided in 2020 to implement solar panel solutions and solar thermal systems as a way to educate students, parents, guardians, teachers, and school officials about the benefits of this type of energy and, at the same time, solve its infrastructure problems at a lower cost. María José Sepúlveda and María Eugenia Cataldo, both teachers and members of the school’s Environmental Committee, explains that the initiative to take advantage of solar energy and apply it to  the establishment began after being part of an energy efficiency contest: “We realized that we were consuming too much light. Our costs were very high. It was after that experience that we asked ourselves as a community, ‘what can we do?’ And just then the Government’s Environmental Protection Funds appeared and we applied to finance our solar panels.”

During 2021, the Luis Cruz Martínez School, through the “Encuentro Solar” project, installed a solar panel system to supply renewable energy to the library and other community places on campus. It should be noted that this establishment receives more than 600 students each year. “Currently, the library’s television, computers, and monitoring center (security cameras) receive solar energy, and we also made a connection to a garden,” explains Ana Hernández Duarte, a geography professor and thesis student of the Interdisciplinary Doctorate in Environmental Sciences at the University of Playa Ancha, who is part of the Environmental Committee of the establishment.

Likewise, during 2022, the community installed a solar thermal system that provides hot water to the sinks and showers in the bathrooms of the children who are in the preschool stage. This project called “Solar Encounter 2.0” was on the priority list of the school community. This is because, despite the fact that Quilpué is called “the city of the Sun”, it has a valley climate whose characteristics are extreme minimum and maximum temperatures. “During winter, it is very cold in the morning and very icy during the day,” says Professor Sepúlveda. “The kindergarten and pre-kindergarten teachers approached the school’s Environmental Committee to request hot water for the bathrooms in these classes. We, as the Environmental Committee, gathered this information and saw that providing warm or heated water through renewable energy was a priority,” explains Hernández.

The bathroom has an associated shower and the school has often lent this infrastructure to vulnerable families in the school community. “We call it a ‘social bathroom’ because there is a family with very few resources in the community that uses this bathroom,” explains Cataldo. In addition to contributing monetary and energy savings for the school and social help for those who need it in their community, the solar panels and the solar thermal system for bathrooms and showers allow for the development of environmental awareness among the members of their community.

In this context, Hernández mentions that despite the fact that the school is in an urban area connected to the electrical grid, as a school community they seek to refute the idea that solar energy is only viable in rural areas when the objective of the municipal establishment is to promote environmental education in the educational community (and other schools in the area) and reduce emissions in general.

“In recent years, the school has seen an increase in students, and it often happens in Latin American countries that the infrastructure of the establishments begin to age and that the electrical system is not always updated at the same time as other renovations. Although there is no specific limitation because we are not in an isolated territory where we do not have access to the electrical grid, we can be a model in education for sustainability and raise awareness among the entire educational community (other schools, parents and guardians) that this type of technology can be used and is accessible. This is because, in general, there is the conception that photovoltaic panels are only used in Germany. So we, as an educational community that works for sustainability, wanted to demystify that idea a little,” says Hernández.

Connections with the community

For the school community, the “Encuentro Solar” 1 and 2 projects not only included the installation of solar thermal panels but also training in renewable energy, environmental education, and adaptation and mitigation to climate change in their community, taught by professionals and academics from the Catholic University of Valparaíso. “There is a mother in the community who, when we taught about solar panels and dehydrators, replicated the system when she had financial problems and started her own business. Now she has a solar oven that she uses to cook and dehydrate fruit,” explains Sepúlveda.

The solar energy photovoltaic system installed by the “Encuentro Solar 1” project reserves energy to use in cases of power outages. “This backup is used to power the school’s security cameras and also one of the pre-school classrooms, which would be like our place in case no one anywhere in the school had electricity.” The next step for this community is to apply for a project with automated and efficient irrigation for the school garden, which will be connected to the electrical grid of the solar panels already installed.

An example for its community

According to local environmental authorities, the proactivity of the Quilpueíno establishment has an impact on the local school community that is generating more awareness, ties and sustainability, which is the result of collective work. The Luis Cruz Martínez School is part of a community with several levels, made up of students, parents, educational assistants, and teachers. Each child and person in the school has a family as well. “Their range of action is also quite wide, and we even link up in one of these projects with a Neighborhood Council. So, we try to create this network where the resources obtained from the project are utilized as efficiently as possible to maximize opportunities and how beneficial it can be,” says Hernández.

Currently, the school has links to the Catholic University of Valparaíso, the National Forestry Corporation (CONAF), and the Corporation of the Municipality of Quilpué. “We have a support network at this time that has been forged through habits. There are even other schools that ask us for advice and help. They come to visit us, to learn about the environmental facilities we have at the school,” adds Sepúlveda.

Through all of the above, they seek to demonstrate to their community that it is possible to find sustainable answers to their problems. “We are executing an energy transition. We are moving to be able to use renewable energy. This is because we seek to be an example for other establishments or communities. If you are in a more isolated territory, solar energy or solar panels are often the only solution to have energy, but when you are already in a context where a network is available, there is usually more resistance to sustainable solutions and, of course, we want to demystify ideas that sustainable solutions are far away or difficult,” says Hernández.

“We even held a workshop on the costs and benefits of having this type of infrastructure (solar panels) for the parents of the school, so that they can implement it in their homes. So, it is like putting the point up for discussion to generate that ecological transition.” However, Hernández says that as a community they are proud that the sustainable technical solutions for the school have been maintained over time. “Our first project was to reduce waste in 2017 and it is still operating. In addition, all of our infrastructure continues to be connected to each other and continues to improve or complement other needs or problems that we want to solve or improve. We continue with this great goal that we have set ourselves of being a model for an educational project that involves education for sustainability,” he adds.

In this context, the Luis Cruz Martínez School has made presentations and talks to other establishments in the area, to the municipal corporation to which the school belongs, and at COP26, disseminating the educational project of the establishment.

“We identified that the educational community understood renewable energy as distant. So, being able to have it in your school and seeing that it works in your library with solar panels, that you go to wash your hands in pre-primary and the water is warm, is something demonstrative and also raises awareness and is part of the children’s daily lives. This is transforming not only their perception and how they receive this type of technology or this type of practice, but also that they are already incorporating some behaviors and patterns with the change,” explains Hernández.

Maintenance: the limitations of the Solar Encounter project

Despite all the benefits and impacts of the “Solar Encounter 2.0” project for its community, this initiative also has its limitations. The installation of the “Solar Encounter 2.0”, for example, included four million pesos for financing (approximately 4,500 dollars). However, repairs and the cost of materials are not included in this budget. In addition, there have been problems with maintenance and coordination of visits. “The solar thermal panel had a leak. After a period of use, like any pipe, it began to leak water. And that is solved by a technician coming. The other thing is that sometimes it has to be regulated, there is a regulator in which the hot water and the cold water have to be balanced. Because if you open the tap, sometimes hot water comes out, and that is dangerous. So there has to be a balance between cold and hot water,” explains Cataldo.

The teacher explains that “at the beginning we had to introduce the team to both the solar panels and the solar thermal, we created a manual with instructions on what to do, how to maintain it, the minimum maintenance that must be done, and we tried to spread it to the assistants. But the same thing happened to us at the beginning when they turned off the hot water taps. Regarding maintenance, it is difficult for us to keep these technicians because they are not so constant over time. Sometimes the service is not on the schedule when one would like. We have to coordinate well in advance for the maintenance visit or any problem that one may have.”

“The dynamics of a school is complex because it is a municipal establishment with more than 600 students, so things have to be done well in advance and they have to be within the budget for the year. For example, now we are thinking about 2025, so we have those types of precautions or details in mind now,” adds Hernández.  Despite the difficulties, Hernández, Sepúlveda and Cataldo highlight the importance of communication and community commitment for the success of these solar and solar thermal initiatives.

“What we are achieving is that the school is entirely sustainable,” says Sepúlveda. Cataldo says that “there is a complete change from how the children were before and now. They have more environmental awareness that they take home.” As for other potential uses, she adds that “I would put solar panels on all the lights here in the school. So that would be ideal. Do more things with this energy. This is a school with a high vulnerability index in which not all parents can pay for electricity. I know that there are many parents who are hanging from the electrical grids. If we had panels, more solar panels, and they knew how to use them, they would not need to be hanging from the electrical grids,” adds the teacher.

“We are motivated to develop environmental awareness in students. In the end, we are already experiencing climate change. Climate change is here. We are experiencing it, so it is very important that the children are aware that with small actions they can contribute to climate change not being so harmful,” concludes Cataldo.

*This article is part of the “Fair Energy Solutions” program by Climate Tracker and Open Society Foundation

Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

The community of the Luis Cruz Martínez School in Quilpué is proud of the sustainable technical solutions they have implemented, as they are not only solar panels and solar thermal systems but also green, clean, orchards and greenhouses, among others.
The Luis Cruz Martínez School in Quilpué installed a solar panel system in 2021 to supply renewable energy to the library and other community spaces on the campus.
In 2021, the Luis Cruz Martínez School in Quilpué installed a solar panel system to supply renewable energy to its library and other community spaces on campus.
The “Solar Meeting 2.0” project installed solar thermal panels to heat the water in the bathrooms of kindergarten and pre-kindergarten children.