Encontro de Energia no Meio Rural
Agrener

Abstract

COSTA, Heitor Scalambrini. Tecnologia apropriada para a agricultura familiar sustentável do semi-árido brasileiro: bombeamento solar de água para irrigação localizada. In Proceedings of the 6. Encontro de Energia no Meio Rural, 2006, Campinas (SP, Brazil) [online]. 2006 [cited 24 April 2024]. Available from: <http://www.proceedings.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=MSC0000000022006000200044&lng=en&nrm=iso> .

Water and energy are the physic factor, which are most influential on the life conditions in the semi-arid rural environment as a whole and in the agriculture production systems in particular. Water is a resource, which - even though not rare - is found in limited quantities and not always is available on the ground surface, meaning that it should be retrieved through either proper wells or deep holes excavated into ground. Therefore, its use should be optimized. In the rural environment to turn water into an available resource in a sufficient amount in order to improve the population life conditions is still a challenge. In the rural semi-arid regions the electric energy distribution is small compared to the other regions of the country. Nevertheless the geographic position of the Brazilian Northeast - close to the equator - adds to this region high levels of insolation - something close to 3,000 hours of sunshine per year - turning this energy resource into a very abundant one. It is known that the use of solar energy, among the use of other resources, has increased the most worldwide in the last decade. The use of photovoltaic cells has increased around 17% per year in the 90's. In the last years several applications, which had the sun as their electric energy resource, were implemented in the rural áreas of many countries. The Brazilian Northeast region was the preferred target of programs and projects aiming at the dissemination of the photovoltaic solar technology. Water pumping is one among the most noble applications of the photovoltaic solar technology. There are many pumping systems configurations for either deep or shallow wells, which use either superficial, immerse or floating motor-pumps, which in turn can be driven by either continuum or alternate current. In this work the usage of water pumped with solar energy from "Amazonas" wells (also called "cacimbões") for small family-based areas of localized irrigation (less than 1 ha), whose main objective is to improve the food and the income of rural populations. The production system is composed of four subsystems: solar water pumping, water reservoir made of pre-molded plates, localized irrigation system ("Xique-Xique") and consorted cultures (fruit and other food trees).

Keywords : rural development; sustainability; income generation; solar water pumping; localized irrigation.