Local company helps power Mexican homes

A Grass Valley company recently installed equipment for what may be Latin America’s first housing development built to be both powered by the sun and an electrical generator.

A subdivision of 220 homes for low-income families in Mexicali, in Baja California state, were rigged recently with solar arrays connected to the local utility grid. SMA America Inc. provided the inverters — the essential piece of the puzzle for converting direct-current power from the solar arrays into alternating-current power used by homes and businesses.

Solar power is not possible without them.

The company is the American division of the German manufacturer SMA Technologie AG, the world’s largest manufacturer for systems that are tied to a utility grid, customer support manager Paul Mync said.

“From little Grass Valley, we are designing systems for countries thousands of miles away,” said Antonio Gomez, the company’s technical support representative who traveled to the California border city to guide installation.

The system in Mexico uses SMA’s 1,100-watt Sonny Boy inverters.

The dedication ceremony was attended by high-level government representatives in the Mexican government, including President Vicente Fox just before he left office.

Surplus energy generated by the systems will be credited to the residents’ account with the utility company.

“In the long run, they will not have a utility bill,” Gomez said.

The demand for renewable energy programs is just beginning to catch on in Mexico, where blackouts and energy costs are rising. The project was subsidized by state and local governments.

“There is a lot of pressure from people to get low rates for electricity. People want that. The barrier is legislation,” Gomez said.

In remote, rural villages throughout Mexico, the government has provided some solar power for at least a decade. In such places, systems typically consist of a small panel outside a house that may run a single light bulb.

SMA America Inc. is a 25-year-old company with subsidiaries in the United States, Italy, Spain, Korea and China.

Besides Nevada County sites, there are 16,000 SMA systems in California, 20,000 in the U.S. and 350,000 worldwide. One system is on the Galapagos Islands, and Gomez was expecting to travel to the Dominican Republic.

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To contact Staff Writer Laura Brown, e-mail laurab@theunion.com or call 477-4230.