Enlightened Energy.

A poor village is light years ahead in solar energy.

LIKE A SCHOOL SCIENCE EXPERIMENT, EIGHT ORANGE BOXES SIT in a line atop a staggered row of tables. Wide flaps inlaid with metallic sheets open to the sky, reflecting light into the boxes' dark interiors. Occasionally a woman moves down the row, pausing to make adjustments.

The eight vividly colored boxes are solar ovens at aptly named Restaurant Solar, the only eating establishment in this village of 300 inhabitants in northern Chile's arid Valle de Elqui. The ovens are a novelty in a nation with just 10,000 solar energy panel systems. In fact, Villaseca is the only place in Chile where virtually all residents cook with solar power. Blessed with an average of 310 days of sunshine a year, the area is ideally situated to harness the sun's potential.

The restaurant opened in September and diners must travel over a bumpy dirt road to its hillside location, but it's already a landmark. On weekends, about 60 customers a day come to savor its specialties: fresh bread; cazuela, a meat stew with chunks of vegetables; and leche asada, or flan, for dessert. The majority of diners are foreign tourists on package tours.

"It's the best meal we've had [in Chile]," says Mark Matthews, a 25-year-old backpacker from New Zealand.

Restaurant Solar is owned by the Association of Solar Artisans of Villaseca, a group of women who have fed their families with solar-baked food for the past 10 years. In an area stripped decades ago of the little firewood it had, the arrival of solar ovens solves a serious problem.

Firewood, the source of one-fifth of Chile's energy, takes an enormous toll on the country's environment. Native forests, devastated by the constant assault, provide 60% of the wood. In the nation's arid northern regions, each family consumes more than 10 tons of wood a year, much of it by clearing shrub.

Pedro Serrano, a Santiago-based environmental activist and one of the Villaseca project's designers, says the poorest Chileans are most affected by the scramble for kindling. "The substitution of its usage with solar technology would not be a market business but a social and environmental business for the country."

Serrano, author of (Solar Energy for All) Energia solar para todos, says there are 300,000 possible users of solar ovens in Chile's IV Region and a full switchover would save more than 2 million tons of brush and kindling annually. It will also save, he adds, about US$60 million a year in lost labor time.

"Before, one person in every family dedicated all day, every day, to the search for wood," he says. "That's ridiculous."

The Villaseca experiment began in 1989 after the University of Chile's Instituto de Tecnologia de Nutricion y de los Alimentos (INTA) placed solar ovens in the homes of four village women. The experience converted one of them, Lucila Rojas, into the leader of Villaseca's solar pioneers. Her faith in alternative energy was sparked by a mundane occurrence: She burned bread--and suddenly understood the oven really worked.

"From that day I realized that it was very important for the world what we were doing," recalls Rojas. "We were the guinea pigs. And now that experience is being used to educate others." Time for a truce. When the project coordinators returned after four months to take the ovens back, Rojas protested. Before solar ovens, "we had to steal firewood, because in the places where you could freely look there was no longer any left. Sometimes we were chased [by landowners], even by gunshots," she recalls. "I was fed up. I didn't want any more war.

Rojas asked project coordinators to teach her to make solar ovens. At the same time, she organized local women to raise funds for a workshop. With $700 they earned selling everything from empanadas, traditional Chilean meat or cheese pastries, to used clothing, they built 33 solar ovens.

To be sure, not all villagers shared Rojas's enthusiasm. Some insisted that food cooked with solar energy caused cancer, claims that sparked a wave of concern. The skeptics, however, were discredited after INTA researchers found that food cooked in solar ovens lacked traces of carbon monoxide typically found in meals cooked with gas or wood-burning ovens. The change to solar ovens also led to an improved diet. "Before we ate a lot of oils and fats, but since you can't fry in these ovens, our diet is much healthier," says Veronica Duran Rojas, Lucila's 24-year-old daughter.

Duran says the social worker who brought the first oven to her home instructed the family to "put it in the sunniest part of your patio and it will cook your food." The reality, however, was more complicated. The oven had to be constantly turned to follow the sun, and the light had to be focused to maximize its power. Moreover, the original ovens were large, making them awkward to shift.

Help wanted. So necessity converted Rojas and her husband, Aurelio Campos Perez, into industrial designers. Over the years, the husband-wife team painstakingly altered the design of the ovens to make them easier to use. Restaurant Solar's 10 ovens are hybrids of the versions created by the couple. "We have improved the ovens a great deal, but the design is still in diapers," Rojas says.

It took two years of trial-and-error experiments to give birth to an oven that could cook for 30 people. That led to the idea of the restaurant. Another eight years passed before the Association of Solar Artisans, now a government-recognized trade organization of 26 families, realized its dream. After using $10,000 from the United Nations Program of Development to build the restaurant, there was still a barrier: Chilean fire regulations that have yet to accommodate alternative energy. As a result, to comply with fire safety rules, a local official charged with enforcing safety permits demanded that the association construct a chimney-like chute to extract smoke. Solar ovens, which are built outside, don't produce smoke.

Today, Restaurant Solar seats 24 diners at a time, often leaving weekend tourists without a table. "We have had to turn away groups of as many as 40 people," says Lucila's sister, Marta Rojas.

Currently, the restaurant employs six full-time association members. Each woman receives a salary of $80 a month, though the bulk of the revenues are reinvested in the operation to finance expenses such as a new addition to the kitchen, plates and equipment. The village's most successful business venture hopes soon to provide more jobs for local residents.

The restaurants organic garden, which supplies most of its vegetables, can't keep up with demand. The production of vegetables, cheese and chickens is expected to be supplied by villagers. In an area where most adults are seasonal agricultural workers earning minimum wage, such a steady source of income would be a great boost for the local economy.

"In the long term the restaurant is going to provide work, job security and a permanent, sustainable income," says Hernan Vigorena, the region's tourism director.

But the women are not just interested in boosting the local economy. The restaurant is a non-profit organization that extols the virtues of alternative energy. "The idea is to show the world the wonders of solar energy not just to Chile and its people, but to all those [international] organizations that could finance solar energy projects for people with scarce resources," says Rojas.

Because of prime time television coverage, the women often receive calls from residents of other rural villages. "We tell them to organize and work collectively. A single person isn't going to get funding," notes Marta Rojas.

Villaseca's quest to spread the alternative technology gospel in Chile hasn't sparked any large-scale projects. But environmentalist Serrano doesn't find the lack of support for solar projects surprising. "The major investors are only interested in alternative energies that have a controllable energy flow, because they profit by selling that electricity," he says. "An unplugged user is a menace to the market."

If that is the case, the women of Villaseca are very dangerous indeed.