Last year, zinc-air battery start-up Fluidic Energy installed backup batteries for an array of solar panels in Welay Selatan, a tiny village on the Indonesian island of Alor. The location is remote, a 77-hour drive from Jakarta, including intermittent ferry voyages. The new solar power setup can bring electricity to 52 homes not currently connected to the grid. The scene isn’t unique. So far, the Scottsdale, Ariz., firm has deployed 22 MWh of battery storage for 96 rural solar electrification projects on some of the Indonesian archipelago’s remoter islands, providing power to 110,000 people. The company signed an agreement with the Indonesian government to provide backup power for a total of 1.2 million inhabitants. Ramkumar Krishnan, Fluidic’s chief technology officer, says many people from the world’s most underdeveloped regions are getting power for the first time from the sun, photovoltaic cells, and batteries locally rather than waiting for long-distance transmission