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Heating water to take a bath every morning has been for decades a huge challenge for Graciela González Jara and her family, residents of Villa 20, one of the largest vulnerable neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, where access to basic services is restricted and limited. Like her, thousands of inhabitants of Argentina live with precarious light connections and without access to the formal gas network.
In winter, when the low temperatures have the city and households, the challenge is greater and the daily ritual, exhausting: families heat water in electric boils or heater that often caught fire due to tension problems. “There are houses that have water and others that are not. It is all very precarious,” summarizes González Jara.
But, now, solar energy could become an ally to shorten these social gaps. With the objective of taking a step forward in the energy transition to clean sources, residents of vulnerable settlements in Buenos Aires, together with community organizations, students and engineers of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and the Young Movement for the Climate, work on projects to manufacture and install panels and thermos solar tanks to supply two Buenos Aires neighborhoods.
“The idea arose from the difficulty in accessing hot water,” explains Gabriela Linardo, a member of Atalaya Sur, a community project of Villa 20, where they work in the construction of solar thermotanques. “We try to connect the technology with the problems posed by the neighbors,” he adds.
Without technical knowledge, they resorted to the Vectors of the Faculty of Engineering of the UBA, which contributed with the design and essays to choose the option with the best cost-efficiency ratio. The final objective is the technological appropriation of the community, including the installation of a factory within the settlement that allows to generate quality jobs and replicate the initiative in other informal neighborhoods of the Argentine capital and the country. “In all, infrastructure is missing: having hot water is a luxury,” insists the civil engineer Ricardo Leuzzi, technical manager and coordinator of the Vector Integration of Popular Neighborhoods of the Faculty.
In Villa 20, where more than 27,000 people live, in addition the situation worsened in recent years: in 2018 there was a pipe cut during urbanization works and half of the neighborhood ran out of water. Since then, the neighbors are supplied by trucks that carry the tanks three times a week, which aggravates precariousness and generates other complications, such as the constant presence of puddles and mud in the streets. “We were conditioned by water,” González Jara laments.
“We plan to make the thermotanque in the neighborhood, so it must be easily built,” explains Leuzzi. Therefore, together with Atalaya Sur they will issue training on solar thermal energy for the neighbors themselves. So far there are two developed prototypes that are in the process of testing. “It works as an isolated thermos: it captures solar radiation and the water reaches the tank through pipes and is already hot. In summer it will be faster than in winter, but the water that is heated is already ready to use,” says the expert.
A generalized problem
In Argentina, the misery villas were quintupled in the last two decades. According to the National Registry of Popular Neighborhoods, there are 6,467 informal settlements where more than five million inhabitants reside. Most do not have access to two or more services: 66% do not have formal electricity, 90% do not access current water network and 99% do not have natural gas.
The absence of services opened the way to informality, with the threat that that entails: exposure to accidents, rises and casualties, explosion of appliances and fires. “The danger is constant. Many neighbors fear to leave their children bathing for the risk. It is a daily condition. Having safe water will change people’s lives,” Linardo is hoped.
Manuela González Ursi, a member of Atalaya Sur, details that 90% of the hot water of the neighborhood is generated from irregular facilities. “We did a survey and 20% use electric turkey (booths) to bathe. 35% use plastic thermotanques, which turn on fire very fast because they emphasize,” he adds. “Bathing is insecure,” he concludes. Buying packaging gas for many low -income families is not an alternative due to the high cost: about $ 12 for 10 kilos, which last between five and 15 days, according to their use.
Face energy poverty
The development of clean energy is still a challenge in Argentina, although the solar is one of the most implemented, along with wind, headed by the ranking. Although it grew a lot, the country is still far from reaching the goal of 20% of electric power consumption with renewable sources provided by law, which should be completed in the late 2025. On the other hand, in June it reached only 16.5%.
“That is why we talk about energy poverty,” says Paz Mattenet Riva, a member of young people for the weather and part of the project. “It is not only access to hot water, but to the conditions to eliminate the risk of electrocuting or fires. The joint between users is important. We want it to be a local design and developed in a popular neighborhood,” he says.
Santiago Eulmesekian, also of young people for the weather, met the problem during a camp of environmental projects for adolescents who participated in 2022. Then the bulb was lit and began to design Desgencanche, a project that already installed four solar panels in the Saldías neighborhood, a small informal settlement of 550 inhabitants on the border to Villa 31, in the heart of Buenos Aires.
The photovoltaic modules were installed in a community center that works in a chapel. “Soon they will generate profits for the sale and production of energy that turn to the network,” explains the young man, awarded by the United Nations in 2024 for his initiative.
Later, he contacted Atalaya Sur to articulate joint projects. “We seek to use renewable energies to make visible that they can give concrete solutions, solve irregular connections and generate income,” he says. “This is facing the fair transition, which should not leave the popular neighborhoods behind,” he reflects.
Although unfortunate is still a pilot project, Eulmesekian is confident that he can replicate to other settlements. Next to the Saldías neighborhood, in Villa 31 – reaped as a Mugica neighborhood – the state urbanization project included the installation of 3,400 solar panels in social homes that were built. “But until today they are used, they do not generate energy,” he laments. “Our initiative is smaller, but it already generates energy that injected into the electricity grid, it is not decorative,” he says.
For González Jara, the neighbors’ commitment to the project is essential. “I live 32 years ago in the neighborhood, I want everyone to have the service accordingly,” he says. “The solution was always renewable energies. They can solve the problem of consumption and electrical safety, as well as improve health, because people die all the time: there are fires, families that lose everything and must start from scratch,” hope is hope.
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