Solar Power to Villages in Karen State, Myanmar

Like everywhere else in the world, our working schedule suffered seriously from the pandemic of COVOD-19.

 Initially we were expecting the 2^nd shipment of the solar equipment from China after the Chinese New Year holidays in January, however, due to the COVOD-19 break out in China, the production could start only 2 months later.

 In the meantime, blockade of village entrances started every place in Myanmar and prevented the entrance of our construction teams since early March.   Only in early May we could re-start our solar power installation works after obtaining authorizations from the State Government and EAOs.

 As stringent special measures by the Government still continue, all the BHN staffs as well as the construction team members are observing strictly the “Operation Manual” of BHN* not to invite any concerns from the villagers.

*Ex. Wearing masks, washing hands well, daily checking of body temperature, etc.

 In our initial plan, we were expecting to finish the installation works of 8,605 home use solar systems by the end of May and the following monitoring works to be completed by the end of August.

However, the delay of 2 months is occurred to restart the works and, on top of that, the rainy season which makes our access to villages difficult, has begun already and we are concerned that the completion of the current project may delay till the end of September.

Soon after the selection of contractors to install solar systems engineers of BHN visited factories in China at the end of Dec. to inspect & improve the production procedures.  As many cases of defects were found with the batteries in Phase 3 we selected another reliable producer of batteries for Phase 4.

While waiting for the production & delivery of equipment all our staffs visited the villages where we installed in Phase 3 and made follow-up monitoring activities to hear opinions from the villagers. 

Some of the responses from the villagers;

Became unnecessary to buy candles and kerosene any more and could improve the living cost.

Became easier to hold village meetings at night time.

Became easier to take care of patients in bed at night time.

Safer against dangerous animals & snakes at night.        Etc.

Along with the monitoring activities we conducted the training of the newly employed System Supporters who were recommended from the villages of work and they will join in the installation work with the contractors.

Also, by this monitoring activities we found many of the villagers were still omitted from the installation list due to the new flow of returnees ,we decided to increase the total installation number of Phase 4 by another 1,279 making the total number to 8,042 households.

As recently as the early Feb. the outbreak of Coronavirus in China is preventing the production for the 2^nd shipment of equipment to Myanmar.  This is the biggest concern with us as the installation work must be finished by the middle of May before the rainy season starts and prevent our works.