The IDEA: 1% to Deliver Energy Access: SimpliPhi Power believes access to clean and affordable energy is fundamental to economic growth, social equity and environmental sustainability – and building our collective future globally. SimpliPhi Power created the IDEA program to empower communities by donating 1% of revenue to support the deployment of clean and affordable energy projects.

The Challenge: The Karen community of southern Myanmar has a rich history and cultural heritage and are currently struggling with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and political upheaval in their country.

The Solution: In 2021, The IDEA partnered with the Border Green Energy Team, Green Empowerment and Karen Department of Health & Welfare to install a solar powered energy storage system to provide resilient power for the community’s COVID-19 facilities and medical resources. The system includes 5.5kW of solar PV, a 5kW GoodWe hybrid inverter/charge controller unit, and 16 SimpliPhi 3.8kWh Lithium Ferro Phosphate batteries.

With the installation of a resilient and sustainable energy system, they can ensure access to medical care to support the community through the pandemic and for years to come.

The implementation also included the electrical wiring in the buildings, and hands-on technical and theoretical training on how to install, operate and maintain the system over the course of two weeks. The training topics included energy storage renewable/non-renewable energy, how solar panel works, basic electricity, solar system components, system sizing, energy management, and system maintenance. There were total of 20 medical and hospital staff from the nearby clinics (3 females and 17 males) participating in this training.

The Impact: The system equips the Klo Yaw Lay COVID-19 Emergency Response Center. The electricity is being used for the daily operations and needs of the staff members at the building (40 LED lights), mainly to ensure charging the electronic devices (3 laptop computers, a printer, several mobile phone chargers) to allow staff to conduct their work. More importantly, the system is beneficial to ensure a consistent power supply to the new building being constructed for the operations of a PCR-based, COVID-19 Testing Machine, and a 28L minus 20°C freezer. This builds capacity in an unprecedented way by allowing KDHW to begin independently testing samples for COVID-19. This important aspect of the pandemic emergency response allows KDHW to more quickly, and efficiently address the spread of the virus in their administrative area.

The KDHW’s Covid-19 Response Center not only serves people living in the nearby areas, but also other nine clinics in the close vicinity which provide medical service to nearly 30,000 people in 69 villages in Hpa-An District, Karen (Kayin) State, Myanmar.

Over the past year, the KDHW COVID-19 Central Pandemic Emergency Response Team alongside district and township-level teams have been working diligently to prepare for, prevent and mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in the seven KDHW administrative areas. With the support of multiple donors, KDHW has provided both clinical and non-clinical COVID-19 training sessions and established pandemic emergency facilities (health screening points, quarantine centers, and fever clinics) in all seven districts.

Read the Border Green Energy Team’s Covid-19 Pandemic Emergency Response Solar Program – Myanmar Report.