A photovoltaic solar energy powered boats operating in the Amazon region will replace highly polluting, dangerous and expensive in maintenance gasoline engine boats. This solution will improve the quality of living of those who feed the city and will bring them sustainable energy, health care, education, internet and improve food production. By raising the socioeconomic conditions of traditional communities, we assure survival of unique culture and preservation of biodiversity.
Solution can be applied in any riverside community and in most of the rainforests that are located near the equator and where there is strong solar radiation.
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AMAZONIS SOLALIS
Solar wings of the Amazon
From Latin: Amazonis solis alis
CAUSE AND IMPACT
This initiative will directly attend over 500 Amazon tradicional families of agroextrativists (approx. 3000 people), living in single stilt houses or grouped in small agglomerations usually in a distance of few hundred to few thousand meters between each other. Boats in this area are the only means of transport.
It will also protect over 90.000 hectares of native forest and 30.000 of agroforest (together 300.000 acres or 20 times the size of Manhattan).
LOCATION
Solar energy powered boat will be operating in the world's biggest river island of Marajó, in a brazilian state of Pará and few other islands in the Amazon Estuary and around the Charapucu State Park. Here is the greatest biodiversity on Earth and new species are still waiting to be discovered.
Municipality of Afuá has a population of 38,863 inhabitants (mostly living in rural area), an area of 837 thousand hectares (IBGE, 2018) and 99% of its forests are preserved (Inpe, 2017).
So called várzea is a periodically flooded Amazonian rainforest, where Atlantic Ocean tides mix with the Amazon River waters, rising and falling, in a rhythm of the moon. Local people live here in stilts houses build by the rivers banks, in the middle of the native, wild jungle, in a distance between a half day away and one day away by the boat from the nearest town.
Rivers here are making function of roads and highways. Surprisingly they don't have any source and are connecting together in a form of labyrinth of thousands of canals. Local communities existence depends on fishing and on the standing forest production: nuts, fruits and berries. Unfortunately most of them have no access to medical care or education system, no running water or illumination at night. This is a region with the lowest Human Development Index ( HDI) in Brazil and at the same time with the best preserved nature.
Typical house of várzea forest on the Marajó island. Brazil. Pará State.
BOAT SPECIFICATIONS
Pontoon trimaran
Capacity: 5 Crew and 9 passengers / 3 Suites
Length: 9 Meters / 30 Feet
Beam: 4,5 Meters / 15 Feet
Draft: 0,8 Meters / 0.24 Feet
2 electric engines
Speed: 10 - 15 knots
2 Decks
APLICATIONS
THE TEAM
Group of people concerned about the environment and passionate about the technology got together to cause a global impact through the local change. Project coordinator, Zbigniew Kozak (read Bio), since 2016 is frequently visiting traditional Amazon communities to identify the biggest and most urgent needs and challenges. He partners with the the team of experienced engineers, academics and students from various fields of Engineering: mechanics, electrical, computing, civil, among others.
Through the SOLAR ENERGY POWERED BOAT Project, we will take the sustainable technology to the traditional riverside communities in the Marajó region raising their quality of living and preserving unique culture and biodiversity.
Indirectly it will affect the rest of the world and global human population, because protected Amazon Forest can continue regulate the world's oxygen, carbon and water cycles and stabilize the climate on our planet for yourself and generations to come.
