Barefoot Enlightenment: Guatemalan Women Trained to Carry Solar Engineering into Remote Villages
Rural villages in Guatemala are increasingly enlightened by the power of on-site solar energy.
Soak that up for a second. This is a Latin American nation where more than 350,000 households still lack access to the national grid, and so they look for as much leadership as possible in connecting new options for clean, local power.
Much of that new leadership is coming from Guatemalan women, mothers and daughters taking advantage of hands-on training in solar engineering. This education, brought directly to many illiterate or semi-literate strivers seeking education and empowerment, comes courtesy of Barefoot College Guatemala.
Solar education multiplies financial options
For the past four years, Barefoot College has trained 41 Guatemalan women in solar installation and generation skills, thus creating close to 1,000 solar home systems across 22 communities. This means poor households, some with dirt floors, have reliable lighting for the first time, and shelter children who now can study at night and work to further their own future paths.
Those village residents also can save on the costs and health detriments of burning kerosene and candles. In other words: health, education and welfare.
“Energy access has a strong multiplier effect across rural livelihoods,” Bárbara Peréz, who is director of the Barefoot College Guatemala energy program, told Microgrid Knowledge in an exclusive Q&A via email communications. “Reliable electricity enables small-scale productive activities and entrepreneurship, improved handling and potential processing of agricultural products (and) greater access to information and communication tools.”
The most recent, fourth cohort (program) of Barefoot College Solar Engineers focused its training activities in the town of Chajul in the Guatemala department of Quiché. The women lived there during a 10-week training stretch on the Barefoot College campus. The women were selected from New Sun Road’s solar microgrid-Digital Community Center hubs in rural off-grid communities.
Barefoot College students learned how to solder and assemble charge controllers, LED lamps, full system wiring, home solar maintenance and troubleshooting, basic electrical concepts and battery management, among other skills.
Working in parallel with Barefoot’s ENRICH Program, the female solar engineers-in-training also are taught life skills with focus on leadership, financial literacy, digital skills, sustainable life practices, entrepreneurship, social equity, health and well-being.
“These components are essential in empowering women beyond technical training, helping them build agency, strengthen leadership and decision-making, and develop confidence and peer support networks within their communities,” Peréz said.
Griselda's solar success story
Since their course completions, some of the women have created their own “micro enterprises,” as self-employed and training solar technicians, offering services such as solar installation, maintenance and repair. This creates new income opportunities and furthers the mission of distributed energy resources in the remote, non-grid portions of the nation.
One such graduate, called only “Griselda” here, graduated in the second class and was selected as a trainer for later cohorts. Griselda also developed her own business practice, independently installing 61 solar systems in her community of El Mirador.
The single mother of two daughters now plays an active role in her community council and is admired even by microgrid experts such as those within New Sun Road.
And Griselda is hardly alone in earning that respect
“Given the strength of the Barefoot College team and the heart they bring to their work for the well-being of communities, combined with their focus on energy access and women’s empowerment, it was clear to us at New Sun Road that this was a partnership worth building intentionally,” Susana Arrechea, global program director with New Sun Road, told Microgrid Knowledge.
Barefoot College Guatemala and its energy director Peréz see ambitious goals shining brighter ahead in the minds of these new and enthusiastic solar engineers. Just as the female scientists at NASA—portrayed in “Hidden Figures”—broke down the racial and gender barriers to space exploration, so perhaps the accomplished new female solar engineers of Guatemala guide expansion in the cause of cleaner, distributed energy across their countryside.
Expanding the light across villages
“Looking ahead, we see strong potential to integrate more advanced energy solutions, including community-level systems and microgrids, that could support productive uses at scale and strengthen local economies,” Peréz pointed out. “This is an area of growing interest for both the communities we work with and our organization's mission to democratize and demystify solar technology through a gender transformative approach.”
This positive mission recalls a quote from another female technology pioneer, 18th century French mathematician and physicist Emilie du Chatelet. Science and progress deliver not only opportunity, but beauty.
“Let us choose for ourselves our path in life and let us try to strew that path with flowers,” Chatelet reportedly said.
In the case of Barefoot College Latin America, New Sun Road and the work of these women in Guatemala, that path may be lighted by newly excited engineers of solar energy. This type of illumination is sure to make their paths forward clearer to see.
New Sun Road has earned previous honor as a Greater Good Award winner by Microgrid Knowledge for the company's work in Guatemala. New Sun Road will participate both as a presenter and exhibitor at the upcoming Microgrid Knowledge Conference.
Microgrid Knowledge 2026 is happening May 4-6 in Orlando.
About the Author
Rod Walton, Microgrid Knowledge Managing Editor
Managing Editor
For Microgrid Knowledge editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].
I’ve spent the last 18 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. I was an energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World before moving to business-to-business media at PennWell Publishing, which later became Clarion Events, where I covered the electric power industry. I joined Endeavor Business Media in November 2021 to help launch EnergyTech, one of the company’s newest media brands. I joined Microgrid Knowledge in July 2023.
I earned my Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. My career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World, all in Oklahoma . I have been married to Laura for the past 36-plus years and we have four children and one adorable granddaughter. We want the energy transition to make their lives better in the future.
Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech are focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.