Off-grid solar brings light, time and income to remotest villages in Indonesia

Villagers on the island of Sumba can now continue the day’s work at night, gather to watch TV shows and help children do homework after the sun goes down

Grassroots organisations like Sumba Sustainable Solutions provide imported home solar systems, but face funding issues in their bid to do more for villagers

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Tamar Ana Jawa is illuminated by a solar-powered light as she weaves a traditional cloth at a neighbour’s house in Laindeha village on Sumba Island, Indonesia, on March 22, 2023. Photo: AP

Published: 3:30pm, 14 May 2023

As Tamar Ana Jawa wove a red sarong in the fading sunlight, her neighbour switched on a light bulb dangling from the sloping tin roof. It was just one bulb powered by a small solar panel, but in this remote village that means a lot. In some of the world’s most remote places, off-grid solar systems are bringing villagers like Jawa more hours in the day, more money and more social gatherings.

Before electricity came to the village a bit less than two years ago, the day ended when the sun went down. Villagers in Laindeha, on the island of Sumba in eastern Indonesia, would set aside the mats they were weaving or coffee they were sorting to sell at the market as the light faded.

A few families who could afford them would start noisy generators that rumbled into the night, emitting plumes of smoke. Some people wired light bulbs to old car batteries, which would quickly die or burn out appliances, as they had no regulator. Children sometimes studied by makeshift oil lamps, but these occasionally burned down homes when knocked over by the wind.

A husband and wife sort corns in their house whose electricity comes from solar energy in Ndapayami village on Sumba Island, Indonesia, on March 20, 2023. Photo: AP

That has changed since grassroots social enterprise projects have brought small, individual solar panel systems to Laindeha and villages like it across the island.

For Jawa, it means much-needed extra income. When her husband died of a stroke in December 2022, Jawa was not sure how she would pay for her children’s schooling. But when a neighbour got electric lighting shortly after, she realised she could continue weaving clothes for the market late into the evening.

“It used to be dark at night, now it’s bright until morning,” the 30-year old mother of two said, carefully arranging and pushing red threads at the loom. “So tonight I work … to pay for the children.”

Around the world, hundreds of millions of people live in communities without regular access to power, and off-grid solar systems like these are bringing limited access to electricity to places like these years before power grids reach them.