47% of people in Honduras are without electricity and clean water resulting in a very high incidence of waterborne disease. This project aims to build on the successes and lessons of Enersol's work using solar power to bring clean, safe, water to 39 families in the village of El Fortin, in the Choluteca region.

The El Fortin project uses solar power to pump water into a large village tank. The water is then distributed in two ways - through communal taps at various points around the village, and through private taps in a few people's front yards.

The villagers pay a flat monthly fee of US$3.25 into a community bank account, and the money is used for maintenance and repair of the PV system and water pumps. This helps recover some of the costs of delivering the water to the village, and provides a powerful incentive to reduce over-consumption and waste. The villagers were trained to carry out basic maintenance and troubleshooting on the system themselves, but when they are unable to fix a problem, they call a technician from a local PV company.

Enersol used the Ashden Award (£5,000) to disseminate information on their water projects. They have published an article in the fourth edition of Sustainable Development International magazine on designing rural PV water projects to maximise cost recovery.

Enersol plans to establish a similar system in another rural Honduran village, this time supplying about 200 people.