Lacló Solar Pumping System

Solco commissioned East Timor's largest solar pumping system at the Lacló community in 2008. Lacló is a remote community 35 kilometres or 3 hours by 4 wheel drive from the capital, Dili. Working closely with our East Timor Representative, Wolfgang Jahns of Buka Timor Hamatuk, Solco designed and supplied the overall solar system, supervised the installation and commissioned the system.

The Lacló community was without permanent safe piped water supplies for their everyday needs. The challenge was to supply up to 100,000 litres of water per day from a 10 metre deep bore to a 63,000 litre storage tank. The tank is located 500 metres away from the water source, 30 metres uphill to provide adequate pressure. Funding was provided by the Japanese Government and administered through the East Timor Water and Sanitation Department.

Solco's solution to the community's need, within tight budget constraints, was to design two tracking solar arrays coupled to a Tenesol TSP6000 pump controller and 2.2kW submersible motor and centrifugal pump. Additionally, as the community has access to AC power during the evening, we designed an automated changeover system and transformer to allow operation when solar power is not available. However, with water flow of 9,000 litres per hour being observed during commissioning from solar power alone, coupled with the performance enhancement provided by solar tracking, operation on AC power is expected to be limited, minimising operational costs.

Buka Timor Hamatuk ably managed the overall installation of the project including site works, tank supply and installation of tanks, the two large solar arrays and additional security features. Wolfgang Jahnes stated that "Being involved in a solar project of this scale has been a great learning experience for us and we now know we have the capability to install Solco's solar products in many locations where no AC power exists in East Timor."

Project leader Chris Middleton commented that, "although it was a challenging project in terms of both the technical aspects and the difficulties of working at such a remote location, we are very pleased with the result and believe we have delivered a system that will meet the community's need well into the future. We believe expected aid funding from Australia, Europe and the US over the next 5 years for water and sanitation will require the use of solar products in many locations throughout the country."