​Public, non-government, and private sector actors each play important roles in the small-scale hydropower landscape.  We are often inspired by the tenacity of locally-rooted, private entrepreneurs who are unperturbed by the challenges that come with establishing and running a financially viable business that also serves rural communities.  In this guest blog post, we hear from Mr. Komarudin, an entrepreneur who wears many hats as a manufacturer, developer, technical consultant, and micro hydro champion in Bandung, Indonesia.  He introduces us to his business, Protel Multi Energy (PME), which has been supporting rural energy access for over a decade. 

Protel Multi Energy focuses on the manufacturing of affordable Digital Electronic Load Controllers (ELCs), as well as micro hydro and pico hydro turbines (crossflow and Pelton) for rural electrification all over the world. Besides product manufacturing we also assist villagers and project owners in planning and designing micro hydro schemes. Sometimes we offer technical supervision on construction and installation. We are also able to do turnkey projects under certain circumstances.

Nowadays, especially in Indonesia, we are developing many micro hydro projects through Dana Desa (village funds). We often provide support for each stage, starting from site survey, to planning and design, project supervision, supply of equipment and post-installation management. Due to their lack of knowledge and experience, we assist villagers to develop their project as their own responsibility, under our supervision to make sure it runs well with a sustainable approach and reliable equipment.

To learn more about PME and access many useful tutorial videos, visit our YouTube channel!

Socio-Environmental Governance

There are many dimensions to the Hydroger Project.  Not only does it help to address basic electricity needs of people living in the villages, but it also has impacts on the environment, social and economic sectors.  Most of the NEPeD’s Hydroger installations are owned and managed by the communities.  Communities with Hydroger systems undergo capacity building and conservation of environmental ideas is deeply ingrained as part of this training. Each project site is also capacitated and facilitated to evolve their own revenue model.

Hydroger being a clean and alternative source of renewable energy has made an impact through energy delivery.  NEPeD while introducing and promoting this technology, has also encouraged the villagers to maintain the upland catchment areas to ensure a sustainable supply of water. ​
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The 10 poorest provinces of the Philippines are located on the island of Mindanao.  As with other marginalized places in our world -- where rural, indigenous populations face social exclusion, frustration, and hopelessness in the face of extractive and inequitable economic and political systems -- portions of the island are controlled by separatist movements, with innocent indigenous communities caught in the crossfire between the government and the rebels.  The situation exacerbates efforts to bring infrastructure for basic needs (e.g. potable water and electricity) and magnifies the innate challenges of rural development work in developing contexts.

In March 1993, a small, young, and local group of alternative development professionals came together with the mission to improve the socio-cultural, economic, and environmental well-being in rural Mindanao, by promoting the sustainable utilization and management of appropriate renewable energy sources and other natural resources.  Versed in technical, ecological, and social aspects of sustainable rural development, the group was called Yamog, translating as dew drops in the Cebuano language. 

Distinct from the conventional community development approaches at the time, the pioneers of the Yamog Renewable Energy Development Group, Inc., pursued a path that was anchored on renewable energy as a springboard towards positive, meaningful and enduring change at the grassroots level, to end decades of deprivation.  It pioneered utilizing renewable energy, not only to lessen the dependence of poor communities on fossil fuels, but also to offer it as a vehicle for marginalized communities to become sustainable.

When Yamog was established 20-years ago, nearly half of Mindanao was un-electrified.  Even now Mindinao's largest city faces daily blackouts lasting 12 hours.  Yet, the nearly 2500 households that have electrified their villages with Yamog's help do not have to rely on the central grid and can access 24/7 electricity.  Yamog continues to facilitate other communities in rural Mindanao and Visayas in generating their own electricity from micro hydro or solar power.​

The effectiveness of Yamog's work is rooted its integrated approach to community-based micro hydropower.  In each project, Yamog's long-experienced staff of 7 are committed to instilling the environmental, institutional, social, and technical aspects that are critical to the project's life.

Involvement of local government

A key aspect to Yamog's work is facilitating communities to generate support from the leaders of their barangay (the most local administrative unit) for watershed strengthening and micro hydropower implementation.  Although challenging, this process has resulted in community hydropower units that have greater vested stake from the local government, and a paved path for the community to reach out to local officials regarding other village development needs. Support from local government can also help establish productive use for community income generation from micro hydropower, e.g. financing of agro processing units such oil mills and rice hullers.​

With a small team, instead of quantity of projects Yamog's work has focused on process and quality to ensure long-term sustainability.  Every year the team typically commits to 1-2 projects and implements them with utmost care, focusing on the elements explained above. 

While larger organizations, with greater number of staff and funding, can easily implement many projects in parallel, they can be prone to frequent staff turnover and prioritizing targets over processes.  In some cases this has led to micro hydropower units that are not long-sustained and soon need rehabilitation.  In this context, HPNET takes inspiration from Yamog's steady and process-focused momentum to establish community micro hydropower. 
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To give you a glimpse of the Yamog's work in action, below is a brief case study of Lubo village's micro hydropower project.
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Case Study:  Sustainability of Lubo Micro Hydro Project -- Two Years Later 
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The residents of Sitio Lubo continue to enjoy the benefits of having a 35-kilowatt micro-hydropower system. Since the renewable energy project was handed-over by Yamog to the Lubo Renewable Energy Community Association (LURECDA) in June 2013, the lives of the people in this isolated and marginalized community have steadily changed for the better.
 
Situated deep in the highlands of Barangay Ned, Lake Sebu in the province of South Cotabato, Sitio Lubo is an off-grid community inhabited by mostly Christian peasant settlers. It is about 65 kilometers from Koronadal City, South Cotabato.  It is populated by 150 households who, for many decades, have been resigned to their dismal fate of being deprived of opportunities that would improve their socio-economic situation. No one among them could have imagined that their vast water resource would someday lift them up from their collective sense of hopelessness and helplessness.

​At the United Nations SE4ALL Forum in May 2015 there was much good discussion on mini-grids.  Anytime the mini-grid technology was specified, it was assumed to be solar PV.  However, there are other -- unsung but proven mini-grid technologies that have long provided electricity -- such as micro hydropower, biomass gassifiers, and small-scale wind.  Needless to say, during the four-day event attended by 2000 persons and a multitude of speakers, we were ecstatic to hear at least one member of a high-level panel highlight micro hydropower!  The panelist was from the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), working across 30 countries on an array of sustainable development projects.  

AKDN's evolution began with the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) established in 1982.  Since then, AKRSP has been committed to the remotest (and likely some of the most beautiful) high altitude regions -- the Northwest Frontier (Chitral) and Baltistan -- where living conditions are harsh and communities are resilient.  AKRSP has blazed trails in this region, literally.  With ample glacial melt waters in the region and little electrification, community micro hydropower became a flagship of AKRSP's multi-faceted, participatory rural development approach, focusing on social, economic, and institutional development.  AKRSP's approach and achievements have justifiably won the prestigious Ashden Award and the Global Development Network's Japanese Award for Most Innovative Development Project.​

​Scalability using a Participatory, Iterative Approach
 
AKRSP's guiding philosophy has been that marginalized communities have an innate potential to manage their own development.  In fact, AKRSP was the first to facilitate community-owned and managed infrastructure in Pakistan, including micro hydropower, irrigation channels, and roads.  In its earliest projects, AKRSP observed the gap between public sector services and village households.  Thereof, at the core its approach has been the development of village-level organizations (VOs) that are capable of interfacing with local government agencies.  As AKRSP's lead Miraj Khan writes, "VO's, when informed and empowered, can negotiate and better bargain for these [public] services on behalf of their members, than otherwise fragmented and powerless rural societies."  Khan attributes its achievement of nearly 200 community-based micro and mini hydropower projects to community organizations.  He also attributes the scaled success to a "living design" and "learning by doing" between AKRSP and the communities, where the program was iteratively  improved based on the lessons of each project. 

​When AKRSP's model proved its success at scale, it was not long until mainstream development actors requested AKRSP's support to replicate the model.  For example, the Sarhad Rural Support Programme (SRSP), also an Ashden awardee, came into being when USAID and the Pakistan government partnered with AKRSP.  Such replication has further scaled up AKRSP's model, with VO's still at its foundation.

Leveraging the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)
 
While the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is one way for community-based decentralized renewable energy (DRE) projects to become financially viable, in practice few DRE developers have been able to meet the complex application requirements and the institutional bundling of smaller, kilowatt projects into substantial megawatts.  In 2009, AKRSP became one of the few to successfully leverage CDM using a community-based approach, initiating a 7-year program involving 90 micro hydropower projects with a total capacity of 15 MW for rural electrification.  The program, costing USD 17.42 million, has started to build AKRSP'S Community Development Carbon Fund, approved under the CDM efforts of Pakistan.  For this AKRSP has an Emission Reduction Purchase Agreement (ERPA) with the World Bank. The CDM project will generate an estimated 612,342 tCO2eq (ton carbon dioxide equivalent) of Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) in the first 7-year crediting period, with the option of renewing for two additional 7-year periods. As of now, 42 projects are in operation and 10 have been commissioned this year, all generating CERs.  For the remaining 38 projects, AKRSP is seeking support for capital costs.   Further details on the program can be found here.

From Micro to Mini-Grids
 
Based on the overall progress of micro and mini hydropower in Pakistan, AKRSP has observed that most of the investment in the sector, particularly for the peripheral villages, focuses only on power generation, without addressing the issues of diversified demand of downstream users that has resulted from the change in economic conditions.  AKRSP's sees great opportunity in linking increased power generation with economic and commercial activities in the main load centers for creating greater socio-economic development of the area. The productive use of energy by communities, with special focus on enterprise and income generating activities, will lead to the rapid growth of the local economy.

To address this, AKRSP has concluded that although scattered and small villages with sufficient water flow and feasible sites naturally provide an easy option to construct a small unit for each village, in some villages the power generation is merely enough for lighting purpose.  Yet in other villages, due to availability of more water, the units generate more power than needed. This situation has pushed AKRSP to think about developing a new system for improved power management and more productive use of energy created by micro hydro project with varied capacities. AKRSP’s new hydro development strategy entails increasing power output (capacities and efficiency) and connecting multiple small units for stable supply of electricity into a mini-grid, thereby creating greater economic opportunities by using micro hydropower.  Similar efforts have been initiated in Indonesia, Myanmar, and Nepal.  This video from Nepal explains technical aspects.

AKRSP estimates that 2.3 MW of micro hydropower can be transformed from micro to mini-grids, benefiting 24 villages in two valleys of northern Pakistan.  AKRSP has recently installed two mini hydropower units, of 500 kW and 800 kW, in Laspur and Yarkhun valleys of Chitral District, along with establishing two local utility companies for the operation and maintenance of these systems.  AKRSP will conduct a feasibility study  for connecting these units into a mini-grid that can provide power to more communities.  The Laspur and Yarkhun valleys also include smaller mini-hydro units, ranging from 100-300 kW, where feasibility studies are being conducted for both mini-grids and grid inter-connectivity.  
 
Other HPNET members have identified grid inter-connectivity and inter-linking multiple micro hydropower projects into mini-grids as prime priorities for sustaining the work of local practitioners. Local developers fuel local economies and provide better post-installation operation and maintenance services.  HPNET looks very forward to learning from AKRSP's vision and firsthand experience to connect micro hydropower units at the sub-valley level, then at the valley, and finally with the national grid.  While this is a common sense goal, most governments and international donors in the region are not familiar enough with its significance, especially as a viable alternative to destructive and inequitable, central-grid based power sources, such as coal and large hydropower, for rural electrification.
 
No doubt, in time, AKRSP will prove the viability of its vision for interconnected micro hydropower mini-grids, and HPNET will be ready to assist in transferring its know how to the region.   More information and research on AKRSP's work can be found here.
 

By Nauman Amin and Dipti Vaghela

In the realm of integrated approaches to community-based micro hydro, we take inspiration from SIBAT, a country-wide Filipino network and people's organization advancing community-based renewable energy applications, sustainable agriculture techniques, and water access solutions.

Organization Evolution
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SIBAT's Filipino name, Sibol Ng Agham At Teknolohiya, translates as a wellspring of science and technology.   In 1984, several non-government organizations, including science and technology leaders  of the country, synergized to help alleviate the struggles of rural communities with the use of appropriate technology   The endeavor established SIBAT as a network to coordinate capacity building for organizations that develop technology for rural areas.  Over the next decade SIBAT led the country's movement for sustainable agriculture, in empowering communities to return to organic farming with improved techniques.  In 1994, SIBAT began capacity building work on rural energy and water solutions.  

Challenges

With 30 years of commitment to rural communities, SIBAT's work faces the following challenges and opportunities:

Practice-to-policy

In the late 90’s and onward, SIBAT joined efforts for policy development on sustainable  agriculture.  It participated in the crafting of the Implementing Rules and Regulations of the Organic Agriculture Law which took effect in 2012. While the law is in place, it lacks mechanisms to strengthen the small-scale, organic farmer.  SIBAT faces a similar uphill in reforming the country's renewable energy law, so that small and community-based power producers are part of the national strategy. To scale community-based energy projects, SIBAT seeks to change the current Renewable Energy policy. Towards this goal, it has taken the lead in facilitating partnerships and exchange events among practice, policy, advocacy, and academic stakeholders.