"The infrastructure is there because back in the late 50's this was a bigger town with access to the border of the USA. Since then, the border has closed, industry has left."
Where abouts would this town be, anywhere near Brownsville Texas? Does not matter really, just wondering.
"They currently use a few solar panels and some batteries for each house."
That might help in setting up a dump load grid I mentioned, if some homes are already set up for solar then they have some things already that can still be used.
"The infrastructure is there because back in the late 50's this was a bigger town with access to the border of the USA. Since then, the border has closed, industry has left. "
Pardon the expresion but is this turning into somewhat of a ghost town then. Empty homes, land, buildings, etc... scattered around fairly cheap to buy? When you say border closed, how hard is it to travel Mexico/Usa if I wanted to come down to visit sometime, would I have alot of trouble getting there? Are there other towns nearby that are still doing well or is this an isolated area somewhat, and what is the employment situation for this town/ area. Pardon all the questions, not trying to be nosey really, just have a couple strange thoughts in mind. I often do 
"We do have lots of junk to work with, and everyopne is willing to work hard and find what we need."
That always helps alot! About how many people is this town? Population and adults only. I know you said about 20 homes, would that be around 40-50 adults and lots of kids?
"I was just thiking that since the lines and poles are there, we might use them in some way. I like the dumpload-grid idea. There might be some potential in that idea."
I kinda like it too
Alot of details to figure out, but might be a great way to start out the way I am thinking of it. I cannot do anything at this time, but perhaps about 5 months away I could have an idea for something pretty good, so keep in touch. I'd be pretty interested in how this works out and would like to see it work well.
I have the idea now, but to many things to do. I will be tied up all summer and much of Fall, till Oct. or later.
"The electrical needs are very low. Mostly lights (DC, low-watts), a TV here or there, radios, possibly a small fridge. At this stage, we are just starting slow and small, but we would like to plan to grow into it."
Keeping it small to start with may be important untill everything is known to work well and how to properly add and monitor things repair broken parts etc.. and the abilty to expand later is also very important of course. It is always easier to conserve power than it is to make it, and since they have little power now, they should be able to conserve and use it wisely as the grid is built. As long as they don't get excited and buy every electric item they can find they should do real well!
"The pole could be used for towers, they are concrete and very strong. Most of them are about 10 meters. The power lines are the same as residential (440 volt??? AC) power lines in the USA. There are some things like transformers, etc, but I am not sure they will work for anything."
This could be usable. There are several ways to "backfeed" electric into an existing grid like in the USA. For instance using a power source of some type to over speed an AC motor will cause it to generate electric. So if you have the correct type equipment, in THEORY if the grid were powered up, you could run an AC motor on the grid power and that syncronizes the motor to the grid, then using another motor of some type (like gas or diesel engine) you over speed the AC motor and it will produce power syncronized with the grid. If the grid goes down the AC motor stops producing power even though it is still spinning fast. Kinda a nice built in safety feature.
You want to avoid gas/deisel engines of course.
Now I mention that for several reasons because it could be useful here in various ways, but first you need the power for the AC motor. Main thing is it kinda shows that producing 110Vac at the house can power the grid, when you do this motor thing, if done right if you are not using the power at the house yourself, then it travels back through the meter up to the transformer and back into the grid. With some meters it actually turns them backwards erasing the power you used earlier.
So if your grid structure is in good shape, then you should be able to use the same principal to back feed the grid from all the homes, though we need to figure a better way than the AC motor. You can buy grid tie inverters but they are far to expensive and for this type setup probably should be avoided. We need some other way that is efficient and cheap.
Another thought is all those power poles, very nice towers maybe for lots of wind gennies, build lots of smaller ones to feed the lines, but then how to syncronize them all to the line is a problem to be worked out. So what we need is to find away to cheaply convert DC volts to AC volts and everything uses the same. An Alternator produces AC volts to begin with, but no 2 units will be exactly the same volts/cycles since they are dependant on the wind. We could rectify the AC to DC then feed the same hardware the homes use to convert it back to match the grid lines, but that seems like a waste and should be away to match them up as AC to begin with. Can't think of a way off hand myself, maybe some-one here can.
"Making our own from salvage is VERY FEASIBLE AND DOABLE. We do have one welder, and some basic tools, so it is not out of our reach, we jut have to play with it to make it work in our favor."
As you begin working on this system be sure to take lots of photos of everything you do and keep really good notes. Not only will it help later if you need to come back and fix/change something, once everything is running near perfect you can put it all on the web or publish a book of the "MODEL RE ONLY COMMUNITY" .
Putting it on the Web as you go, kinda day by day, may also be very helpfull to you also.
Are there other towns around your area that have the same type power problem.
Good luck
