Due to years of isolation from the international community, rural Burma has been cut off from the renewable energy revolution that has been sweeping the rest of the Third World. A series of renewable energy installation workshops over the last few years has started to change that.

 

Background

With generous funding of £5,000 from the Ashden Trust, two hands-on renewable energy workshops were conducted in June 2002. One was for thirteen participants in Myitkyina, Kachin State in northern Burma, and another for fifteen participants in Toungoo in central Burma. The workshops emphasized both theory and practice of solar-electric system installation and maintenance.

In the course of the workshops,participants installed three, 55 watt solar-electric systems. Two were in rural NGO training centres—the Metta Training Centre in Alam, 17 miles (27 km) north of Myitkyina, and the Shalom Centre, 15 miles (24 km) north of Myitkyina. The third system was installed at the Thaw Thi Kho Clinic in Toungoo.

System Design

In designing the systems and specifying equipment for the installations, I emphasized locally available equipment, high quality, and expandability.

Local equipment procurement makes the systems easier to repair and replace. It also reduces expenses and uncertainties associated with customs and immigration. I used solar modules and charge controllers purchased froma dealer in Yangon, Burma’s capital, instead of bringing them in from my home base in Thailand. All other materials (wire, 12 volt lighting ballasts and bulbs, inverter, and connectors) were available in regional towns, as well as Yangon. I purchased many of these materials in Yangon because prices were lower and availability more certain.

Heavy or fragile items, such as batteries and fluorescent light tubes, were purchased in regional towns.

I used high quality solar modules and controllers, and searched out materials (wire, solder, crimp connectors) to make high quality connections. Besides improving the reliability and expected life of the system, emphasizing quality has an educational objective. After completing the installation, workshop participants know what a quality installation should look like, and how to do one. Poorly installed solar-electric systems are alarmingly common in developing countries (maybe not yet in Burma, but possibly in the future).

These generally function, albeit poorly, for a while, but they waste precious electricity made by the expensive solar panels. When the systems stop functioning properly, they give renewable energy a bad name.

Related to system quality is the issue of battery depth of discharge. In many solar-electric systems, the batteries suffer early death because users chronically overdischarge them. To avoid this common problem, I used charge controllers with a low voltage disconnect (LVD) function that disconnects 12 volt loads before battery voltage falls to dangerously low levels. Using the LVD function required the use of 12 volt lights.

Finally, I wanted the systems to be expandable. Racks were made large enough to accept a second module. Charge controllers were sized to accept additional lights and solar-electric modules for future expansion.

Technical Information

I chose Siemens SM55 modules for the systems. These have 36 single-crystal cells in series. Unfortunately, the solarelectric company in Yangon offered a considerably better price for Siemens SM50-H modules, which have only 33 singlecrystal cells. Most of Burma is quite warm during much of the year, and I have seen 33 cell modules in tropical developing countries fail miserably at charging 12 volt batteries because of the modules’ temperature-induced voltage drop. Do these 33-cell modules really work when it is sunny and the ambient air temperature is 30°C (86°F)? I suspect not, but would love to hear some reports from the field.

The design for each system was more or less the same: one 55 watt PV module, a charge controller (Siemens S12 or Steca Solsum 6.6), several 12 volt lights, a Burma-made “300 watt” inverter, and a 12 volt, 120 amp-hour “deep-cycle” battery.

Rev. Saboi Jum from the Shalom Centre helped me transport the solar-electric equipment by airplane (train would have taken several weeks) to Myitkyina. He happened to be on the same flight and was traveling with no checked baggage. Using his baggage allowance (and political clout) avoided significant overweight baggage charges. The flight to Myitkyina took all day, since the airplane was grounded for four hours in Mandalay due to inclement weather.

Myitkyina Workshop

The Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC) Development Department Office hosted the training at their main office in Myitkyina. Because foreigners are only allowed to stay in certain registered hotels located in urban or semi-urban areas, having the workshop in Myitkyina was logistically convenient. More important, KBC has considerable experience in hosting workshops of this nature. The KBC provided facilities for the workshop, workshop materials, lodging and meals for workshop participants, local transportation, and the services of Nang Doi, an excellent English-Kachin translator. The KBC contacted participants for this year’s workshop, including community leaders, farmers, and technicians.

Six of the twelve workshop participants had attended the workshop that I taught in February 2001. Five of the six had worked on renewable energy projects of one kind or
another since that workshop. I was very impressed by these activities, especially given the fact that they had very little to work with. Several had also built and used solar ovens in their communities.

La Wuam had built a hydraulic ram pump (but had problems with the flapper valve, just as we had in the workshop). Tu Ja had tried to build a windmill using a bicycle dynamo (and remains very interested in this project). Zau Sam had built many bamboo waterwheels for his educational work with children.

Htoi San had begun work on a second village microhydro, but stopped for lack of funds. He also had installed the solar-electric system at the Kachin Theological College. For his microhydro project, he was doing surprisingly advanced work. He was using an induction motor as a generator (he had seen this done in China at the border near his village), and had experimentally determined appropriate amounts of capacitance to provide excitation current. He was very interested to see a book on this subject that I had brought, by coincidence.

Most workshop days were a mixture of theory (taught in the classroom) and practice (in the field). Considerable attention was paid to developing a theoretical understanding of basic electricity concepts—current, voltage, resistance, power, and Ohm’s law.

We then built on these concepts to develop an appreciation for the need for low resistance wiring and electrical connections for low voltage electricity applications. We also covered basic system design principles, and learned what features of solar-electric system components are most important for long-term system sustainability. Finally, we covered maintenance and operations procedures.

Installation

Metta Centre Installation

In the field, each solar-electric installation took about one and a half days to complete. We started with the installation at the Metta Centre. The Metta Development Foundation is one of the few local NGOs that exist in Burma. It works to assist Burmese communities to recover from the impact of decades of civil conflict. Two of the renewable energy workshop participants were from Metta.

The centre trains farmer-teachers in multi-month training courses on integrated farming methods. The farmer-teachers return to their villages to set up field schools. The Metta Centre itself is a working example of the successful application of these natural farming methods. Starting with land that had been abandoned as unproductive and barren, Metta has adapted natural farming methods to produce impressive crop yields.

The Metta Centre is many miles away from grid electricity. The solar-electric installation will be used to power lights for evening meetings and to power two computers used to write reports. Amicrohydro system using a 1 KW, AC Chinese turbine was installed last year. Stream flow is insufficient to provide adequate electricity yearround, so the system only functions during the wet season.

The center also has a diesel generator that is used only occasionally because of the high cost of diesel fuel. For lighting, lamps and candles are used most of the tim e. The solar-electric system at Metta included a battery charger to take advantage of electricity from both the diesel and microhydro when they are operating. The microhydro and diesel are not run at the same time; a transfer switch is used to run one or the other.

For the solar-electric installations, participants broke into three teams. One team was assigned the task of mounting the solar module. The second team was in charge of wiring for the 12 volt lights. The third team wired the battery, fused disconnect, and charge controller. The system will be maintained by two Metta Centre workers who attended the five-day installation workshop.

Shalom Centre Installation

Our second installation was at the Shalom Centre, about 9 miles (15 km) north of Myitkyina. The Shalom Center provides a forum for a variety of peace and reconciliationactivities following the cease-fire between the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and the Burmese military. It is also involved in efforts to find sustainable development opportunities for the Kachin people to replace the current reliance on resource extraction—teak logging, gold mining, and jade mining.

We installed a solar-electric system at the night watchman’s house at the Shalom Centre. Though the center has a diesel generator, it is seldom used because of the high
cost of fuel and generator maintenance. The solar-electric system will provide reliable and affordable lighting for evening meetings at the Shalom Centre.

The center is located far from grid electricity. Using a transfer switch connected to the centre’s generator, electricity from the solar-electric system will power lights in a key meeting room at times when a few lights are needed, but turning on the generator would be overkill. The system also powers a 12 volt fluorescent light for the watchman’s
house. One of the renewable energy course participants is responsible for maintenance at the Shalom Centre, and will look after the operation of the system.

With the successful completion of both installations behind us, we held a review and question and answer session. It covered participants’ interest in less expensive
renewable energy technologies—hydraulic ram pumps, hydroelectricity, biogas, and simple wind turbines. In the closing ceremony, I donated the tools that we had used in
the installation, as well as several books and Home Power compact discs on renewable energy to KBC.