The business of bringing light to rural Mindanao
'Ka Darang is a woman on a mission. After more than a two hour- boat ride from her village in the island of Sumangat, she strides into the Datu Amirbahar Jaafar Convention Center in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi where various solar photovoltaic lighting and energy equipment are currently on display by renewable energy companies from different regions in Mindanao and even as far as Manila. She had been notified that the Alliance for Mindanao and Multi-regional Renewable/Rural Energy Development Program was going to hold a Renewable Energy Business Exposition, and she could not miss the opportunity to fulfil her mission of finding financing support to enable all the 620 households in her village to purchase ?solar? for their energy needs.
Solar Lighting for the Island
As it stands, 72 households in Brgy. Sumangat source electricity from a solar home system, while 32 source it from a battery that they charge at the island?s 12 module-solar photovoltaic battery charging station. Many of the southernmost Philippine province?s 203 villages are off the grid, spread as they are across more than 300 islands and islets. Like the other nearly 60,000 households in the province without electricity, the rest of the households in the village use kerosene lamps for light.
That is what ?Ka Darang ? or Darang Akit ? a 59-year old community leader wishes to change.
?Ka Darang moved to Sumangat from the capital Bongao when she married in 1972. A high school graduate and conversant in the national language Tagalog, she has been at the forefront of development efforts in the island village since then, including an initiative to provide energy access to residents in the village. The AMORE Program ? an electrification program that supports the Philippine government?s rural electrification efforts ? came to the island in 2002, established a solar photovoltaic battery charging station and provided some 30 households with batteries, and organized community members into an association that will capably maintain, sustain and even intensify the initial impacts of the rural electrification program. ?Ka Darang was elected chairperson of the Sumangat Barangay Renewable Energy and Community Development Association, a post that she has not vacated since.
Nine years on, Ka Darang is still the indefatigable village leader ? the Parents/Teachers/Community Association?s president, barangay health worker, BRECDA chairperson ? that continues to look for ways to improve her village?s lot.
Out of funds pooled from charging fees (P30-P40 for each battery charged) from the PV battery charging station, the Sumangat BRECDA recently procured ten solar home systems and replacements for dead batteries. Following the association?s Operations & Maintenance collection scheme, the households with new PV sytems paid a small downpayment and will pay an affordable fee for 24 months, which will go back to the O&M fund.
A person for others (she was talking about donating her ? not hers but God?s land, she said ? 700-square meter lot to the village school),?Ka Darang wishes to extend the benefits of safe and reliable lighting source to other members of her community. Convenient lighting at home is not the only benefit of solar, she says. Many of the villagers use the PV lighting system in their livelihood ? copra and seaweed farming. At least seven families even take the system with them when they move to another island (Sipangkut) where they would stay for six to seven months while farming seaweeds.
With a variety of PV technology options now available and being exhibited at the Renewable Energy Business Exposition, ?Ka Darang hopes to network with organizations and suppliers that might be willing to do business with the Sumangat BRECDA.
The business of bringing ?light? to rural Mindanao
An introduction to Del Genta, Inc., a solar PV supplier, might just be what ?Ka Darang needs. A newbie in the solar PV business, Del Genta ? a telecommunications company ? was lured into the industry by subsidies offered by the then World Bank-Department of Energy Rural Power Project, which aimed for electricity to reach off-grid rural areas using renewable energy technologies. As a participating company to the Rural Power Project, Del Genta supplied the hardware to some villages energized by the AMORE program.
That was when Gem dela Calzada, Del Genta?s proprietor, got introduced to community associations from all over Mindanao organized by the AMORE program. Dela Calzada has found a profitable market in these unserved areas, so much so that his business dealings with the Central Mindanao BRECDA Federation ? a congregation of more than 40 BRECDAs from the provinces of Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao and South Cotabato - went beyond the AMORE program?s second phase?s project life. He sold approximately 3,000 units of 20- and 30-watt peak solar home systems, he says, while the Rural Power Project was ongoing.
And he hopes to sell more that is why Del Genta has always participated in AMORE-sponsored business expositions since the program had started holding such in 2010. Such business expositions, he says, help in marketing and promotion for his small company which has always relied on word-of-mouth for advertisement. Apart from always being able to sell PV products on display, business groups or individuals have always come back to him for business after an introduction at these business expositions. At the Tawi-Tawi exposition, for example, three groups have already expressed interest to do business with Del Genta.
The business expositions put together by the AMORE program gather the various rural electrification stakeholders ? suppliers, local entrepreneurs, community associations, microfinance institutions ? in a two-day event. Stakeholders are introduced to one another and discuss innovative ways of providing and financing energy access through solar PV to rural communities. Since 2010, five business expositions had been held in strategic areas in Mindanao ? Zamboanga City; Jolo, Sulu; Dipolog City, Zamboanga del Norte; Koronadal, South Cotabato; and the latest in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi.
Through a creative business plan that fits the lifestyle and income levels of the farming and fishing villages that are Del Genta?s market, Del Genta is able to reach the ?poor? segment of the rural market. By deploying sales and collection people on the ground ? whose activity coincides with the cropping and harvesting seasons ? Del Genta has sold more than 300 units in Tawi-Tawi, Jolo and Basilan from the Basilan hub, and hundreds of units in Central Mindanao from the Marbel hub.
Reaching the poorest of the poor, though, is a different matter, dela Calzada says. Subsidies are still necessary if the government is serious about spreading access to solar PV technology among those occupying the lowest rung in the income ladder.
Del Genta also offers financing schemes not to individual buyers, he says, but to BRECDAs. In the BRECDA dela Calzada has found an efficient and reliable marketing and sales unit, through which households in the village could be reached by solar PV lighting equipment.
The AMORE program supports the BRECDAs in their assumption of entrepreneurial functions in the renewable energy business in Mindanao. By capacitating the BRECDAs and at the same time supporting the renewable energy suppliers? business activities, the third phase of the AMORE program aims to extend RE access to at least 24,000 households in Mindanao from 2009 thru 2013.
Since 2002, more than 13,000 households have been energized either from the AMORE program?s direct electrification or renewable energy supply delivery strengthening activities in Mindanao.
AMORE is a rural electrification alliance between the United States Agency for International Development, Department of Energy, SunPower Foundation and Winrock International.