Sustainability of Micro Hydropower Generation in a Traditional Community of Indonesia

Tatsuro Sato,Jun’Ichiro Ide

doi:10.1007/978-981-15-8632-3_4

Abstract

AbstractOver 3 years, we undertook a micro hydropower (MHP) project in the Ciptagelar village, West Java, to improve the understanding and implementation of sustainable operations and management of MHP generation in remote rural areas, where the primary industry is farming and thus monetary incomes are low. First, we describe in this paper the history of setting up the research agenda to be tackled with the cooperation of governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders. Second, we report the current status of MHP plants and the related issues obtained through fieldwork and model simulations, in the context of culture, traditions, and society in the village. Finally, we propose guidelines to solve the issues and present the lessons learned and things scientists should pay attention to when proceeding with transdisciplinary research projects in remote rural areas. Through fieldwork and model simulations, we revealed issues related to budgeting and techniques for maintaining and operating MHP plants. We found that the village had difficulty in securing funds for repairing broken intake weirs, though it had funds to cover the general maintenance of the MHP plants. We also found that the intake weirs were vulnerable to large floods and that no accomplished technicians were available to operate MHP plants in the village properly. To solve these issues, we need to find ways to reinforce the intake weirs using local materials and increase monetary incomes by creating new industries based on the MHP generation while considering the cultural and traditional backgrounds of the remote rural areas.

Highlights

Global energy demand nearly doubled from 1970 to 2003, increasing with population and economic growth
It was found that in approximately half of the micro hydropower (MHP) facilities introduced in remote areas in Java, intake weirs, headrace channels, and penstocks were broken by flood and sediment disasters, and the MHP generation stopped (Rahadian 2016, personal communication)
To evaluate the vulnerability of MHP plants to disasters and build the countermeasures scientifically, we investigated the structure of the broken intake weir of an MHP plant

Summary

Introduction

Global energy demand nearly doubled from 1970 to 2003, increasing with population and economic growth. When the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake occurred, homes wherein photovoltaic power generators were installed received uninterrupted electricity supply, even during power grid failures Considering these diverse positive impacts encourages the creation of sustainable energy systems. At the Institute of Decision Science for a Sustainable Society (IDS3) in Kyushu University, we have collaborated with local communities to develop bottom-up sustainable social reforms We hope that such individual challenges (learnings) encountered at the local level will be shared via the global network, leading to a big wave of support for a sustainable society. The micro hydropower (MHP) project, which is an essential renewable energy source in the farming villages of Indonesia, is introduced In this project, we aimed to answer the question, “how do we realize sustainable MHP generation in remote rural areas?”. We would like to share crucial points to help conduct Future Earth research that orients the cooperation between scientists and social stakeholders

Phase I (2015): Setting Up the Research Agenda to be Tackled (Co-design)

Phase II (2016): Research Framework in the Ciptagelar Village (Co-design)

Phase III (2017): Learning the Context of the Ciptagelar Community (Co-production)

Exploring Measures to Solve the Issues

Concluding Remarks and Perspectives

Lessons Learned

Findings

Building a network flexibly