Turning the lights back on in Terian

It was a big screen...

On my way back to the UK, I stopped off again in Singapore. While I was there I did a presentation at the Singapore Science Centre about my experiences at TONIBUNG and micro-hydro power.

I also talked about one of the villages which I had visited recently, Kampung Terian.

Kampung Terian's school

Kg. Terian  was the first community micro-hydro system in 2004 but has unfortunately been damaged over time and is currently not functioning. When I went to visit Kg Terian in April, my task was to survey the site to understand what work would be required to get the system running again, and assess how much it might cost.

Surveying

The village is in a really beautiful and remote area of the Crocker Range but they have been without a reliable electricity supply since 2015 when a lightning strike damaged the system. We stayed with a family there who are lucky enough to be able to afford a diesel generator – we had lights for a short time each evening for preparing and eating dinner, and for the kids to do their homework. Not all families can afford to run and maintain a diesel generator, and even for those who can, they were substantially better off when the micro-hydro system had been running. The electricity is limited to a few hours per day (at least for those families with diesel generators and when the road conditions are good enough to get access to fuel) and the constant drone of the diesel generators definitely detracts from the otherwise peaceful environment. There are also less obvious implications; we were told that without the reliable electricity supply, fewer grown-up children were now returning to the village from the towns and fewer people were engaging with the traditional crafts since they have to be more selective about what they do with their few hours of electricity in the evenings.

The number of people involved with traditional craft making
had increased when they had a functioning micro-hydro but has
now declined again

My experience with only a few hours of electricity per day was mainly small irritations. My phone battery died because I hadn’t remembered to charge it in the evening when the electricity was on, I had a lot of trouble trying to find a pen when the lights weren’t on (even with a battery-powered headtorch), and it was even more difficult to try to stumble to the outhouse toilet in the dark after generous servings of local rice wine!

The community have come up with a plan to get the system running again and make some upgrades to the design so that it is more efficient and robust in the coming years. The community micro-hydro committee will work alongside TONIBUNG over the next year to raise the funds, make the detailed design for the system improvements and then make the repairs. All of the work is done as part of a traditional style of community shared labour called Gotong Royong.  The way that it works in Terian, each household is required to contribute one person to support a day’s community work at least once per week. This system is an effective way to make improvements to the village because it keeps costs down and makes sure that everyone in the village is involved.

Gotong Royong (community work)

 The first step will be to replace the Electronic Load Controller which was damaged in the lightning strike. We have a crowd funding page to try and support that so if you are able to help us with financial support for this project, it would be really appreciated. If you want to find out more, my slide packs are here and here, and please check out the crowd-funding page here.

Sugarcane snacks