Now the microgrid sits idle and many residents have reverted back to their old lives. “We sought help from donors and the government, but those funds only helped us until January 2021,” says Brisal. To revive the grid network, Brisal says he would need about $100,000 a year for maintenance and operations, plus nearly $560,000 to replace the faulty batteries. That left the company without any income to keep functioning. The system’s performance began to deteriorate and it ultimately stopped working. While the company that provided the batteries had guaranteed them for 10 years, the business shut down and wasn’t able to make good on the agreement, according to Nino Dewa Brisal, president director of Mikro Kisi Sumba. A few months after construction was completed, some of the battery packs began to leak. Soon, though, signs emerged that things weren’t going smoothly. The Puskesmas health center invested in electric-powered equipment to sanitize tools and refrigeration to store vaccines and anti-venom serum. People who were connected to the grid could pay as they went, adding money to their accounts to access the electricity. More than 850 houses and 50 public facilities were able to get power throughout the day from 11 micro grids.Ī local company, PT Mikro Kisi Sumba, was established to run the network and collect payments for the power. In 2017, the national government and Millennium Challenge Corp., a foreign-aid arm of the U.S., began installing micro electric grids to give residents access to a constant electricity flow for the first time. Within two years, only 3% of households connected to the grids were using non-renewable energy, down from 21% before they were installed, according to Millennium Challenge.Īt first, life on the island was transformed. The entire network, when completed, included 300 street lights and 48 kilometers of distribution lines. For a few years, Prai Witu village in Indonesia was a shining example of the good that clean energy can bring to an impoverished community.
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