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Car. Plane. Boat. Hike. For Mauricio Solano-Peralta, a renewable energy engineer from Infratec Ltd., sometimes reaching the project site can prove more of a challenge than designing a renewable-based energy system. Mauricio and the New Zealand-Maluku Access to Renewable Energy Support (NZMATES) team is currently working to establish clean, sustainable power throughout Maluku Province in Indonesia, often traveling for days on end to bring renewable energy to remote island communities.
Maluku, Indonesia’s eastern province, is comprised of 1,422 islands and about 1,200 villages. Fishing and agricultural production form the basis of the province’s economy, including a considerable portion of the world’s nutmeg. However, access to markets and energy is a challenge for almost all of Maluku’s 1.7 million inhabitants. This presents a great opportunity for microgrid deployment as well as an operational challenge to sustain system operations in extremely remote locations.
The team’s focus this month is Pulau Tiga, a community of 60 households and a small hotel that currently relies on a diesel generator that operates 12 hours a day. At one time, the diesel system was supported by a solar mini-grid, but when the lead-acid batteries failed—a result of sitting at low charge over time—it fell into disrepair.
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