By Lani Guerke
A small group of dedicated and enthusiastic engineers from Sydney are developing micro hydro-electric systems for Solomon Islands villages, enabling the people to be independent and leaving the environment intact.
APACE, an engineering research organisation based at the University of Technology Sydney, has developed a hydraulic turbine that is used in villages and underdeveloped areas, where technological backup is at a minimum.
The only village so far to benefit from this technology is Irri. Irri's main industry is market gardening. The villagers need electricity to power cold storage and some machinery.
Paul Bryce, president of APACE and associate professor of
electrical engineering at UTS, said that when APACE started back in the 1970s, the idea was "to find a way to develop alternative technologies suitable for communities less fortunate than ours".
He said that they wanted to find a viable alternative for villages such as Irri, which were frequently cajoled into selling their forests and land to multinational companies, often ruining the community's essence and structure.
Initially APACE developed a low-cost accessible fuel for underdeveloped countries. This involved new processes for blending diesel with alcohol from cassava, a sweet potato-like plant. Then, in the late 1970s it moved on to the development of a Pelton wheel turbine, the basis for the hydro-electric system that is now in place in Irri.
The project to provide electricity for Irri was an ambitious one and had marginal technological feasibility. According to Bryce, there needed to be "a model that could provide village-scale technology that would be sustainable and feasible.
"It hadn't been done before. The very notion of it, in a place where there was no institutional support, was new. This site was attempting to set up a system with no technological backup and very little hydraulic power."
During the early 1980s Dick Smith lent APACE money to research the feasibility of the Irri site. Also, two teams of representatives from the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation from Vienna came out to inspect the project and to encourage APACE. Funding was gained for the Irri project, in 1983, through UNIDO.
The Solomon Islands consul general, Hugh Paia, said that the government's role in this project and other projects run through APACE was mostly one of moral support. "They are very much community-based projects", he said. According to Paia, the project at Irri is running well and is "contributing to the funding of community es and medical expenses".
According to Donnella Bryce of APACE, "Several villages in the Solomons are pushing to get similar schemes up and running, but the government seems to be opposed to the idea. The hydro-electric scheme gives the village independence, and independence empowers. The government doesn't like this, and it's unlikely that any government would encourage villages to follow Irri's footsteps. It erodes the amount of control the government has."
APACE is looking into several other sites in the Solomons to start up similar projects. It also has research interests in Nepal with the earth brick construction of a training centre, and in Thailand with a desalination project which, like Irri, is to be sustainable on a village level.
APACE is a voluntary organisation and is always looking for volunteers to help with a wide variety of tasks, from answering the telephones and typing through brochure design and graphic artwork. If you can help, contact Paul or Donnella Bryce on (02) 330 2554.