Electricity "Beyond" Lighting

Early this week Directorate General of Electricity and Energy Utilization has just announced the tendering of the provision 26 Solar Home System project packages. Each package has a volume from 500 up to 1200 systems. Most of the packages have average volume of 600 SHS. Total there will be around 17.000 solar home systems or almost 1 MW capacity. The money involve is around 120 billion IDR (equal to around 13 million US$ à exchange rate IDR 9.200 for 1 US$). Huge amount of money, huge capacity, huge work, many villages will be so called “electrified”, maybe some “corruption” (cannot smell it though…), unclear benefit to the recipient, and no real “economic” benefit to the country.

Biggest chunk of the price goes to PV panels (50 Wp panels) and I believe the contractor will just get cheap Chinese panels. There is no local industry to manufacture solar cell and laminate it to be solar panels. Therefore, the biggest money just flies away from Indonesia. No “real” progress for the Indonesians just more consumptions for “small number” of people that financially benefits from the project.

Enough for the complaints, let’s move to another field. I believe that electricity should be used beyond lighting. Lighting is just creating a false development feeling. One might feel developed after having electricity and lights. Nevertheless, I believe that there should be a more tangible impact rather than just brighter nights. This means electrical energy should be able to boost the productivity. Productivity means people producing something. Producing is not servicing. Giving service is just a mechanism to redistribute income. Productive use of electricity is the key.

How can solar home system be used for productive use? I am not an expert in solar power system, but I can always see that solar systems always involve battery and battery usually performs less and less and less and less. Things can get worse if the user just by-pass the battery charge/discharge control (happens always in the villages – learn this guys!!). Battery’s DoD is passed easily if one bypass the controller. Battery is the weakness of the system. I still cannot think of one solar home system that can support productive use..(provide me an example please??).

I am not against solar power, but please not waste a lot of money to provide SHS to the villages. There is no real or more tangible impact of it. It is just lighting. In the statistic, it will certainly look good because electrification ratio rises fast. SHS is fast to implement and next year is election so…this 120 US$ million is just political. They use villagers to make them look good for next year’s election.

Let's be pro-poor in a more tangible way...