Little Story about an Amazing Workshop

Earlier November 2015, I had an amazing experience to present and to attend a workshop related to energy and development. The workshop was initiated by Smart Village Initiative. I have known Smart Village since last year when i decided to apply to  University of Cambridge as a PhD student. I met Prof. John in the workshop, an academic whom I put high respect on. He was the one who introduced me with Smart Village, a very kind-hearted professor I have ever known in my entire life so far.

 

Talking about the workshop, since my research interest is always on the intersection between energy and development, i was so excited to attend it, although I also felt tremendously nervous as the presenters are top-notch people in development field. Let me mention Ibu Tri Mumpuni or widely known as Bu Puni, the one and only true hero of renewable energy deployment in Indonesia. Bu Puni is the Director of IBEKA, a social organization which have many renewable energy projects using participatory development in Indonesia. Other social enterprise players such as Kopernik aslo attend the workshop. Other presenters came from various countries particularly some countries in Pacific region which you might have never heard like Fiji and Kingdom of Tonga. Australia also sent their presenter to the workshop.

 

In the workshop, we discussed about off-grid electrification for development of small islands. Indonesia is home for myriad of small islands. Some of them are inhabited and many others are not. For those which are inhabited, the issue of energy provision and electricity are the real struggle. PLN as Indonesia's electricity company still could not afford to electrify those front-line islands. Thus, the community in the island mostly rely their needs of electricity on the renewable energy sources. Usually the community in the remote island generate electricity from solar panel. For basic electricity needs like lighting and cooking, the community bought the renewable energy technologies from the social enterprise like Kopernik. However, those community are often failed to pay the technologies, hence end up trapped by mountainous loan. I basically do not really like the idea of selling technologies to the poor, as their purchasing power is usually very low, but if really there is no other options for the poor, the-so-called social enterprise could be considered.

 

In the fiirst day of the workshop days, we had a chance to visit a community which got their electricity from the solar panel installation in their village. Too bad, the electricity they received was not in the maximum capacity as some panels were dis-functioned. It was actually a project given by PLN (Indonesia's electricity company). There was actually a PLN representative came to the workshop, yet unfortunately she did not join the field visit due to she just joined the workshop in the second day. It would be very nice if she could see and if we could listen to her explanation about the current situation occurred on some of the panels.

 

The second day of the workshop was full of valuable presentation. I was truly hyped and wowed to listen to some new concept as well as practical projects that have been done by those practitioners. I really need to study more and to practice more as development is not merely concept, it is best when it is practiced and used for the betterment of the community. I could not explained about the presentation one by one, but i for sure will make a summary of those presentation and will upload it in here. Now, I have to go back to my current work in the Ministry of Development Planning. I hope God will give me another chance to be able to participate in many other events related to energy and development. I also hope that I could meet many great profs, practitioners, and experts who do the issue of energy and development nexus for years. I am keen to study more!

 

Sri