A mini grid revolution in Myanmar
Every year, the monsoon approaches from the southwest. And for as long as five months, Myanmar is shaken by tropical winds and drenched by sheets of hard rain. The people are used to it. But it doesn’t make their lives any easier.
Because during the rainy season, entire villages become cut off from the world. The land is too wet, too muddy, too dangerous to cross.
In a poor country that already lacks proper power grid infrastructure, the people living in Myanmar’s most remote rural areas are forced to rely on diesel-powered off-grid telecommunication towers, or solar panels that are just about useful enough to power a light or a TV.
Even then, that’s only for five hours a day—at best. And if power fails during the rainy season for those stranded villagers?
When no one can bring through diesel for the backup generators, there’s no way to help. But for some, that’s changing.
SteamaCo and YMP
SteamaCo is in partnership with Yoma Micro Power (YMP), a private company bringing sustainable energy to Myanmar communities through small-scale solar power plants.
YMP finances new power plant and grid infrastructure in remote areas with a long-term vision in mind, as their village mini grid analyst DZ comments, “We see our mini grids as one day being a bridge to the centralised grid.”
Vital to achieving that goal is the ability to operate reliably in remote locations. So when monsoons arrive and travel to sites becomes impossible, YMP needs to keep power uptime high and to troubleshoot issues remotely.
It’s why they work with SteamaCo.
Smart tech for remote operations
SteamaCo’s smart meters and cloud-based technology remotely send and receive site information, allowing YMP to perfect the power generation and distribution from its solar plants.
“The flexibility that’s in the existing SteamaCo monitoring system, and the culture of the company to continually innovate means that SteamaCo will continue to meet the needs of customers like us,” says DZ. “We’re still experimenting and innovating on our business model, so the openness and flexibility to incorporate new features into the SteamaCo product is critical to us.”
One example of this culture of collaboration is where behavioural analysis led to creating new custom tariffs.
Targeted product design
Bringing reliable power to remote villages creates greater demand. Where once people used only TVs and lights, now they use refrigerators, water pumps and rice cookers. The latter, in particular, created a challenge for YMP.
Rice cookers demand a large amount of power for a short amount of time, so YMP’s power plants needed to meet the peak demand when everyone turned on their cookers—even though it only happened for an hour or two a day.
SteamaCo and YMP worked together to understand daily routines, and developed a tariff that incentivised households to cook at slightly different times, smoothing peak demand without disrupting anyone's daily habits.
As DZ looks back and comments today, “Having more control over how much power from each meter can be used at different points in time allows us to utilise our power plant more effectively. Ultimately, that translates into a lower cost for our consumers and higher returns for us.”
Future growth
Armed with SteamaCo’s smart metering platform, YMP is decades ahead of Myanmar’s national grid at powering remote areas. YMP sells electricity to meet its own costs until the grid finally arrives, when it will sell the plant to the villagers at a depreciated price ready for connection to the grid.
And YMP recently secured US$40 million from its shareholders to fund growth with plans to power another 250 villages by 2022. That’s over 50,000 households. And it’s hundreds of thousands of lives changed.
With ventures like YMP and SteamaCo’s, perhaps one day Myanmar’s entire rural population will no longer need to rely on daylight hours only. But for now, one thing is for certain.
The tropical rains always return. And when they do, everyday village life still has its challenges—like being cut off from the world.
But being able to trust YMP and SteamaCo to deliver reliable and sustainable power throughout the full monsoon season?
That makes life a whole lot better.