Christmas has come to town and since late November, Bangkok has been increasingly filled with lights of all shapes and colors as part of decorations adorning balconies, streets and shopping centers. Many families and friends will also meet this Friday to celebrate the holiday over Christmas dinner.
So it is a good moment to remember the more than one million people in Thailand who will celebrate this time in darkness, without access to the electricity grid.
Tak province, where many ethnic Karen Christians live, is one of the most affected, followed by the province of Mae Hong Son, both located close to the Burmese border.
“Tak province has the largest number of off-the-grid households. The old number was 23,000 [households] 10 years ago, but I believe it is now higher because more families has been created since then and the population has grown,” explains engineer Salinee Tavaranan, CEO and founder of SunSawang, a company that has been bringing electricity into homes since 2013.
“The new number [of off-the-grid households] in Mae Hong Son province is 25,000.”
The main problem for this leafy province, declared a National Park, is that it is not allowed by law to install power lines to transmit electricity to homes.
Thus, without access to the grid, villagers are left with little choice but to adapt their lifestyle. Their villages remain isolated, the shops have to close early, and families, who generally work in the fields, must return home to cook or do other chores while the sun still shines.
In most cases villagers use candlelight, but their homes are usually constructed of bamboo and dried leaves that can easily catch fire.
“My house has burned twice because we forgot to blow out the candles. Every night we use four or five packets. When we do prayers, we need more than 10 [packets],” says a Thai Karen missionary who lives in Tot Pla Day, a small village located four hours away from Mae Sot, in Tak province.
In some cases, villagers use kerosene lamps to light their homes, but also find it very expensive, and it can also cause negative health effects. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), kerosene is linked to several respiratory diseases, such as tuberculosis, in addition to being a risk for burns and poisoning.
These communities must gather wood in order to satisfy their most basic needs, a task that is normally carried out by women, reducing their productivity potential for other activities. Meanwhile, some schools and hospitals do not have access to power to meet their basic needs, such as keeping vaccines refrigerated.
In order to find a solution, in 2004 the Thai government invested USD250 million to install solar panels to bring electricity to households off the national grid.
However, it was not enough. In 2007, just three years after installation, 80 percent of the panels had stopped working because no one was taking care of them.
The villagers say that although the government installed the panels, the officials did not return to maintain them, so in most cases, the control boxes and special batteries stopped working.
“The battery for the solar system broke again and again. We had to buy new batteries. Then the entire system broke. We lived for two years without electricity again, using candles and fuel in order to see at night,” says one of the inhabitants of the village.
This was not a surprise, because in 2006 the German Solar Energy Society conducted a study that showed considerable questions remained concerning the sustainability of these solar electric systems.
For example, local beneficiaries were given no information on how to repair solar home systems, and there were no locally available replacement parts or information for users about the system’s warranty.
Batteries are necessary to store solar power, but they are very expensive and have a limited lifetime of four or five years; and without maintenance, a battery might last less than a year.
“Before, no one was concerned with the batteries. We saw that people were willing to pay if they received a good product and service. That’s how the business [SunSawang] idea came up,” explains engineer Tavaranan.
“Currently the beneficiaries from solar [power] systems and lanterns in households [from my company] are more than 4,000 people. About 2,000 students benefit from the solar [power] systems for their schools.
“We are expanding in the Mae Hong Son province this year and next year, but we are still working in the three sub-districts in Tak province.”
Tavaranan’s team seems to have learned from past mistakes, and now trains local technicians in each of the villages. They also agree to fix any problems with the batteries or control boxes for up to five years.
Villagers with this solar power system now have more time to farm in the evening because they have light, and they do not need to rush home to start cooking dinner. Additionally, women can weave at night and sell products, and shops can stay open after dark to serve more customers. Moreover, there are no fires in houses where residents have forgotten to blow out the candles.
Nevertheless, energy generated by these panels is currently not enough to meet some of the villagers’ basic necessities.
“Villagers with solar power have light, can charge batteries and see movies at home. But there is not enough energy for cooking,” says one of the company’s technicians.
Some villagers still need gas bottles for cooking, or need a larger solar system installed. The company is now looking for an efficient cooking stove for them and will try to sell these as well.
Until then, they must keep looking for alternatives.
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