During the last three years, a Consortium between Caritas Switzerland, the University of Applied Sciences in Biel and IDE (International Development Enterprise) has tested a small-scale solar water pump in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Carbotech, on behalf of Caritas Switzerland, has supported the project development and implementation.
The solar water pumps allows small farmers in developing countries to grow vegetables during the dry season and to sell them on the market with good perspectives to obtain significant returns. The capacity of the pumps has been designed in a way to avoid the overuse of water resources, as it has been observed with the use of diesel pumps, enabling vegetable gardening to be sustainable. An important advantage of the product is its high mechanical degree of efficiency of 30 to 100%, meaning that water can be pumped very efficiently even when the sun is low. In fact the system uses the energy without intermediate storage in a battery. The performance of the electric motors ranges between 80 and 320W. An 80 W pump allows to transfer slightly more water than a person would pump in one day with the help of a hand pump. In many application cases, around 2000 m2 of vegetables can be cultivated.
At present, Carbotech supports the first commercialisation steps of solar water pumps, especially the technical aspects and field tests.
