Solar Cells Info

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
Ko Si Boya, Thailand, June 12, 2007
Source: IPS News
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38134

Till over a year ago, health officials worried over maintaining the cold chain for vaccines delivered to children on this island. These included the ten given to new-born Thais, such as those for polio, diphtheria, tetanus, Japanese encephalitis and tuberculosis.  The nearly 30-minute journey on the Andaman Sea, the transfer to the health centres and the storage before final administration were points where the vaccines could get exposed to high ambient temperatures and lose potency.

But there is relief now on the faces of women like Sumon Kritiden, 54, who heads a staff of three at the health clinic, an open and airy building located at the entrance to this village of 126 families. A solar power system installed in 2006 now generates enough electricity to keep the vaccines cool in a fridge.

‘’It is so different now, very convenient. We can treat children and mothers who come here without the old worries,” says Sumon as she lifts the lid of a sturdy blue container where the vaccines are stored. The temperature inside this fridge for vaccines is at the recommended eight degrees Celsius.

Mothers in this community are welcoming the difference in their worlds since solar power took over from generators run by diesel and where candles were often used at night. ‘’Having a fridge for vaccines here is good. We do not have to worry about getting bad medicine,” says Siranee Yarii, 29, a mother of two boys.  Others, such as Halima Cholathi, a 33-year-old mother of two children, points to further benefits that the new alternative power source has brought. ‘’We can watch some television at home. We can charge our mobile phones here,” she says.

However, many in this Muslim community agree that there still is a need for caution. If the power supply is not carefully managed, overuse during the day could result in limited or no power at night. In Ko Si Boya’s school, for instance, only one of its six computers can be used at a time, says Somsak Nakarang, the principal.

This community’s predicament of not having the benefit of a 24-hour power supply is an anomaly in Krabi, the southern province it is located in. It is one of the most developed areas in this South-east Asian nation with a high per capita income thanks to a bustling tourism industry — it topped over a million visitors last year.

What adds to this mismatch is the proximity of Ko Si Boya to a major power plant in Krabi. ‘’It is a funny situation, because the island is located close to a power plant,” energy minister Piyasvasti Amranand told reporters over the weekend. ‘’You can see the Krabi power plant from the island but there is no electricity there.”

‘’This is a common situation in Thailand where communities close to power plants do not get the immediate benefits and are excluded from the national grid,” he added. ‘’That is why there is a need for solar cells.”

In fact, Bangkok’s plan to supply this island with power through an environmentally friendly alternative is part of a national initiative that brought power to 353 villages in the country. Like Ko Si Boya, they are all isolated or located in places where laying electricity cables have proved costly or daunting.

‘’Most of the villages that are non-electrified and receiving solar power are in the north, in the hilly areas close to the Burmese border,” Suree Buranasajja, senior scientist at the bureau of solar energy development in the energy ministry, told IPS. ‘’It has been difficult to connect them to the national grid.”

But the aim of the Thai authorities is to move beyond harnessing solar power for communities lacking access to the national power grid to one that serves as a genuine alternative fuel. The ministry wants to use solar power ‘’for electricity generation in order to reduce peak demand in the power generation system,” according to a note on Thailand’s alternative energy plans.

Currently, renewable energy contributes a mere 5.37 percent of all the fuels Thailand uses to generate electricity. Of that, biogas, palm oil and paddy husk are the major contributors to the power distributed on the national grid. The country is hoping to add 44 Mw of electricity through solar power by 2011.

Thailand has potential to produce more solar-power energy than the target set by the government, Suphakit Nuntavorakarn, an independent alternative energy researcher, explained to IPS. ‘’The figure should be much higher, since we have so much to draw from here.”

There are problems though. Many of the earlier solar power generating systems introduced across the country as models fell apart quickly. ‘’The officials did not teach locals how the system worksà and when they broke down the people did no know how to fix them,” Suphakit said.