A village in Peru, who lives in the dark next to the massive sunny plant

Every morning, Rosa wakes up the flames licking the cardboard trimming in the improvised plate in the yard.

In the boxes she brought home, 800,000 solar panels with high technology occurred. Now they ignite her fire.

Between 2018 and 2024, these panels were installed in Ruby and Clemes, two massive sun plants in the Moquegua region, about 1000 kilometers south of the capital, LiMa. Together, they form the largest solar complex of the country – and one of the largest in Latin America.

From her house in a small settlement of the pmponsta, Rosa can see the ranks of panels glowing under white floodlights. The Ruby plant is only 600 meters.

And yet her house – and the rest of her village – remains in the complete darkness, which is not related to the mesh into which the factory feeds on.

None of the 150 residents of the Pamp Clemesi has access to the national power grid.

Several has solar panels donated by Ruby, Orygen, but most cannot afford the batteries and converters needed to work. At night they use torches – or just live in the dark.

The paradox affects: Ruby’s solar power plant produces about 440 GW per year, it is enough to put electricity in 351,000 houses. Moquegua, where the plant is located, is the perfect place for solar energy that gets more than 3200 hours of sunlight annually, more than in most countries.

And this contradiction becomes even more sharp in the country that feels the boom of renewable energy sources.

Only in 2024, the production of electricity from renewable sources increased by 96%. The solar and wind strength are heavily dependent on copper because of the high conductivity- and peri-second in the world manufacturer.

“In Peru, this system was developed around profitability. There was no effort to connect sparsely populated areas,” explains Carlos Grudzida, an energy expert at the University of Santa Mary in Arekip.

ORIGEN says he fulfilled his responsibility.

“We have joined a government project to bring electricity into the pmps of Clemes and have already created a special line for them. We also completed the first stage of electrification project, and 53 electricity towers are ready,” said Marco Fragale Executive Director Orygen in Peru, BBC NEWS Mundo said.

Fragale adds that nearly 4,000 meters of underground cable have been set to provide electricity for the village. He says the $ 800,000 investment is completed.

But the lights still didn’t come.

The last step is to connect a new line to individual houses is the responsibility of the government. According to the plan, the ministry of mines and energy should lay about two kilometers of wiring. The work was scheduled for March 2025, but it did not begin.

BBC News Mundo tried to contact the ministry of the mines and energy but did not receive a response.

There is no socket at the tiny house.

Every day she walks through the village, hoping that someone can spare the electricity to charge her phone.

“It’s important,” she says, explaining that she needs a device to keep in touch with her family near Bolivia.

One of the few people who can help is Ruben Pong. In its large house – with the courtyards and several rooms – a group of speckled chickens fights for the roof space between solar panels.

“The company sacrificed the solar panels of most villagers,” he says. “But I had to buy a battery, converter and cables – and pay for installation.”

Ruben belongs to what others just dream: the refrigerator. But it only works up to 10 hours a day, and on cloudy days, not at all.

He helped build the Ruby plant, and then worked in maintenance, cleaning the panels. Today it manages the composition and connects to the company, although the plant is located just across the road.

Crossing the Pan-American highway is prohibited by Peruvian legislation.

From his roof, Ruben points to a group of burning buildings away.

“This is the substation of the plant,” he says. “It looks like a small urban city.”

Residents began to settle in Pamp -Klemes in the early 2000s. Among them is Pedro Sales, who is 70 years old. He watched the Ruby factory for 500,000 panels rose almost on the doorstep.

Most of the village was built of the tossed materials from the plant. Pedro says even their bed is coming from the wood.

There is no water system, no sewage, no garbage collection. There were once 500 inhabitants in the village, but due to scarce infrastructure, most remained specially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Sometimes, waiting for so long, fighting for water and electricity, you just feel like they die. It’s all. It dies,” he says.

Rosa hurries to the aunt’s house, hoping to catch the last daylight. Tonight she prepares dinner for a small group of neighbors who share food.

In the kitchen, the gas stove heats the kettle. Their only light is the solar torch. Dinner is a sweet tea and a fried dough.

“We only eat what we can keep at room temperature,” Rosa says.

Without cooling, the products rich in protein are difficult to store.

Fresh products require a 40-minute bus trip to Moquegua-if they can afford it.

“But we don’t have the money to ride the bus every day.”

Without electricity, many in Latin America are prepared from firewood or gas, which risks respiratory disease.

In Pamp -Klemes, residents use gas when they can afford it – a tree if they can’t.

They pray for food, shelter and water, and then eat silently. This is 7pm, their final activity. No phones. No TV.

“Our only light is these little torches,” Rosa says. “They don’t show much, but at least we see the bed.”

“If we had electricity, people would return,” Pedro says. “We were left because we had no choice. But with the light we could build the future.”

The soft wind spill the desert streets, lifting the sand. The dust layer is settled on the lamps on the main site that awaits the installation. The wind signals that the dusk comes – and soon there will be no light.

For those who do not have solar panels, such as Rosa and Pedro, the darkness reaches until the sunrise. He also hopes that the government is once acting.

Like a lot of nights earlier, they are preparing for another evening without light.

But why are they still living here?

“From the sun,” Rosa replies without hesitation.

“We always have the sun here.”