The Ministry of Amerindian Affairs (MoAA) will be pushing ahead with its Hinterland Electrification Project in 2012 with 10,000 more solar panels expected in the country within the first quarter of the new year.
Minister of Amerindian Affairs Pauline Sukhai yesterday indicated that the continuation the project is one of the priorities of her ministry in the new year. In the final quarter of this year, the ministry was able to install 1,000 65-watt solar panels in communities across the country.
While there has been a delay in the arrival of next batch of panels, Sukhai said that these are expected shortly after which the installation will begin. She said that while the Ministry of Public Works has overall direction for the project and is responsible for the procurement of the panels, the MoAA is the agency actually implementing the project. The aim of the project, she said, is to enhance the electricity supply to more households in the Amerindian areas.
The project is part of government’s thrust to tap into alternative forms of energy supply while ensuring that electricity is provided to people living in remote Amerindian communities, particularly those that cannot be connected to a power grid.
It is also a crucial component of the Low Carbon Development Strategy and ushered in the second stage of the Hinterland Electrification Programme, which is part of the national Unserved Areas Electrification Programme (UAEP) launched in 2005.
A study done by the Hinterland Project Preparation Component of the UAEP identified solar panels as the best alternative energy source for the hinterland. “This is based on several factors including limited economic opportunities, lack of developed infrastructure as compared to rural areas on the coastland, and villages are widespread and houses are largely dispersed from each other,” the Government Information Agency (GINA) recently reported.
The study also revealed that solar energy is probably the best source of energy for the majority of hinterland areas as Solar Home Systems would facilitate the installation of individual, isolated systems avoiding the use of grids that would be costly due to long distribution lines. Through the UAEP, 24,000 households benefited from electricity.
Meanwhile, Sukhai also said yesterday that her ministry will be pushing the ICT sector in the hinterland communities. This, she said, would be closely linked with the government’s much vaunted One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) project.
