Atutu Community-owned Microgrid (ACM)

In February of 2021, Myanmar’s democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup, resulting in the displacement of over 1.5 million people, or over 3 out of every hundred people. Approximately 1.8 million of the affected population became internally displaced persons (IDPs), resettling throughout more rural regions of the country in a mixture of permanent, temporary, and unhoused communities. We estimate that over one in four of these resettlements lack electricity for a myriad of reasons: camps lack the infrastructure for grid-level energy, national government has halted rural electrification programs, and international non-profits have been unable to prioritize electricity accessibility. As a result of Myanmar’s internal turmoil, approximately 600,000 IDPs are estimated to live in communities without reliable access to electricity. In addition, many rural and off-grid indigenous communities are seeing that their electrification plans have either been delayed significantly or canceled.

As the number of IDPs and un-electrified remote communities continues to increase and grid electrification stalls due to destabilization from the military coup, the usage of unsustainable fuel sources skyrockets. The typical Burmese family consumes 16 kilowatt-hours of electricity per day for required daily tasks. With an average family size of five people, we can estimate that around 100,000 families live in IDP communities without access to renewable energy sources. This translates to a daily usage of 1.6 gigawatt-hours of electricity per day using wood, diesel, and other sources of fuel. This is equivalent to nearly 1.2 million pounds of coal used everyday by off-grid IDP population. Solar energy solutions in rural Myanmar stand to mitigate a massive amount of greenhouse gas emissions by replacing unsustainable fuel sources with renewable energy.

While many citizens cope with the stress of resettlement, lack of electricity in the home can further aggravate personal losses. Without reliable electricity throughout the night, young students struggle in maintaining their studies, family businesses close earlier, farmers are unable to prepare their harvests after dark, and families resort to wood-burning stoves for cooking and heating their homes. The lack of reliable access to affordable energy harms the respiratory health, economic growth, and social development of the off-grid communities. Though diesel generators can ease some of these issues for a small portion of the population, fuel is often prohibitively expensive or difficult to access, validated by our community interviews, and noise pollution prevents families from running generators through the night. Despite these struggles, communities are actively developing solutions to meet their energy needs. Atutu partners with these communities seeking out reliable and affordable energy solutions to light their homes, cook their meals, and potentially connect them to the internet by bringing equitable solar energy to their homes and gathering spaces.

Sources: 

<https://www.state.gov/marking-two-years-since-the-military-coup-in-burma/#:~:text=Since%20the%20military's%20coup%20on,more%20than%201.5%20million%20displaced.>

<https://www.ohchr.org/en/calls-for-input/2023/call-contributions-international-communitys-treatment-those-fleeing-myanmar#:~:text=According%20to%20UN%20estimates%2C%20more,million%20Rohingya%20refugees%20in%20Bangladesh.>

<https://reliefweb.int/report/myanmar/myanmar-humanitarian-update-no-29-6-may-2023>

To mitigate the negative environmental impact from off-grid housing and improve the social development of the off-grid communities, Atutu will be setting up solar microgrids to power critical community infrastructure and residential buildings. Atutu Community-owned Microgrids (ACM) consists of four major components: a solar array, hybrid inverter, lithium batteries, and remote monitoring system. The solar array is the energy production of the system, converting sunlight to electricity; the lithium battery stores excess energy for night time use; and the hybrid inverter effectively manages the energy between production, utilization, and storage. The remote monitoring system allows us to monitor the usage and health of our system, from how much solar energy is produced per day to how much is used and stored. 

Our microgrid is designed to reliably address the energy needs of the community, while adapting to changes in energy consumption as the communities develop. Leveraging our deep rooted community connections, we first build the load profile based on the appliances that people currently use as well as the appliances they will be incorporating into their lives. We then will size the system based on the solar energy availability, geography, required energy storage, as well as required power delivery. Upon consultation with the communities on the proposed design, our local team will make the installation. With the installation of the ACM, communities gain access to 24 hour AC electricity; at a capacity of five kilowatts per module, we can reliably power up to five separate buildings by one system. Once the installation is complete, we provide training on operation and maintenance of the systems, and our team will regularly assess the performance of the system using the ACM’s monitoring tools, as well as by reaching out to the community members to uncover any remaining energy gaps. Because we utilize stackable modular systems, we are able to scale the energy delivery by increasing or decreasing solar array size, the energy storage, and power delivery to match the energy demand. This community-integrated approach of renewable energy access has proven to minimize cost while matching the energy demand of the community. 

As the upfront cost is the highest barrier for the adoption of our solution, Atutu is in the process of testing new financing options. In addition to the upfront payment option, we are considering three financing options so the communities can adopt renewable energy quickly: upfront payment, monthly repayment options, and energy-as-a-service. We are currently trying to develop partnerships with organizations and companies that can handle the financing part of our solutions. 

Pilot Installation of Atutu Community-owned Microgrid in Northern Myanmar: https://www.atutu.org/2023-cm-installation

Product page of of the Atutu Community Microgrid: https://www.atutu.org/microgrid

The Atutu Community-owned Microgrid (ACM) is geared to provide 24-hour AC power to internally displaced persons (IDP) and off-grid villages in Myanmar whose electrification plans have been canceled or delayed significantly. The 2021 military coup in Myanmar has resulted in additional 1.5M IDPs, bringing Myanmar’s IDP total population to 1.8M as of May 6, 2023. Due to the rapid and significant increase in the IDP population and budgetary constraints faced by relief organizations, many of the IDPs are forced to resettle in off-grid regions of Myanmar in new communities without grid-level electricity. Additionally, rural villages have had their formal electrification plans stalled by the ongoing armed conflicts. Communities without access to reliable electricity often rely on diesel generators to provide power for crucial equipment such as water pumps, lamps, and cookware. However, diesel generators create debilitative noise pollution, and with access to diesel fuel limited due to rising inflation, unsafe traveling conditions, and inconsistent distribution, families often have to live without electricity.

Our community microgrid has already begun impacting lives in Myanmar through our pilot project at an off-grid monastery in northern Myanmar. Over 30 students, from kindergarten to 4th grade, live and learn at the monastery, cared for by three teachers and two resident monks. Typically, the monastery relies on a diesel generator to provide power for water pumping and night-time lighting, spending around 72 USD per month on fuel. When donations for diesel fuel are insufficient, students and staff must carry water up the hill and study in the dark, limiting their educational opportunities and activities during the day and night. After conducting thorough surveys and discussing the monastery’s energy needs, our local team installed our five kilowatt community microgrid, electrifying four buildings within the compound. By utilizing abundant solar energy, Atutu has helped to expand the monastery’s energy access from 4.5 hours per day to 24 hours access. Now, water pumps, study lamps, and street lights can all be run throughout the day while simultaneously eliminating the noise, greenhouse gas emissions, respiratory health risks, and financial burden caused by the diesel generators. Due to our system’s reliability and additional financial savings, the monastery has made plans to electrify even more necessities, such as kitchen stoves, water and space heaters. By adopting the ACM, remote villages in Myanmar can fully power their current needs, and then continue on to improve their quality of life through additional energy access.

Atutu was founded on the principle that communities possess the lived expertise to design solutions for their local obstacles and have the right to implement them through their own volition and desire. As a result, Atutu is not only proximal to, but driven by members of the off-grid Myanmar communities that lead, develop, and implement our solar products. Lin Thu Hein, Atutu’s team lead and co-founder, grew up in rural Kachin, Myanmar, in off-grid communities. He brings his shared lived-experiences to develop more equitable and accessible solutions for the off-grid families of Myanmar. Being formally educated in electrical engineering and relying on his experience in the solar industry, Lin’s expertise in energy infrastructure development and IOT monitoring technology empowers our team to develop resilient solar solutions while optimizing supply chain and cost. He looks to dismantle energy inequities in energy access by centering Burmese cultural knowledge and historical perspective of geopolitics. 

Likewise, the Atutu’s Solar Field Technicians, who discuss electrification options with communities, lead installations, and respond to maintenance requests, are young local leaders brought up in the same rural villages they serve. With their unique perspective, they iterate and implement solar solutions with deep rooted community knowledge that can only be earned by being proximate to and part of local off-grid communities. Without ties to off-grid communities, infrastructure specialists and foreign non-profits alike often make inaccurate assumptions about their products or the communities they interact with that can lead to harmful consequences, such as dependencies on outside aid, resistance to solution adoption, or obstacles left unaddressed.

Our local team members often face energy shortages and cut-offs in their own homes, giving us a unique perspective into energy needs of the off-grid community and how helpful certain products can be. Every project we take on begins with the discussion of the specific village’s energy needs and cultural habits between local leaders and Atutu local team; projects are not begun without the full support and participation of the community. Through these conversations, we quantify the kind and quantity of electricity required, identify ideal solar panel locations, and make preparations for installation. Everything, from the demographics of the village, the kinds of chores and activities people perform, to the kinds of crops the local farms grow is taken into account. 

Our community-integrated delivery model is a testament to the success we’ve had in our energy access initiatives. Our first solar energy product, the Solar DC Home System (DCHS), which provides light and cell phone charging, has been implemented in over 262 residences, with 98 additional families on the waitlist for 2023. Through DCHS installations, we’ve brought affordable energy access to over 1310 off-grid people in northern Myanmar. Building on the success of our community engagement and installations, we are venturing into a larger power system solution, Atutu Community-Owned Microgrid to reach higher environmental and social impact. With our track record of deploying DCHS across off-grid Myanmar, we are confident that we are uniquely positioned to effectively deploy solar microgrids as well. 

While our initial solution, the solar DCHS, serves over 250 families and businesses, the Atutu Community Microgrid is still in the early stages of development. 

Our pilot system currently provides 24/7 AC power to over 30 students, three teachers, and two monks at the boarding school and monastery in northern Myanmar. We have confirmed three additional installations at critical community locations (a rehabilitation center, a local clinic, and a mobile trailer for community events) for 2023.

Atutu has been successful thus far in providing single family homes and small businesses with DC solar power through our DC Home Systems (DCHS), enabling adequate lighting and phone charging through the night. By implementing our next solution, the Atutu Community-owned Microgrid (ACM), we hope to further enable off-grid communities in reducing their reliance on unsustainable sources of fuel to power their day to day tasks. In addition to reducing the harmful environmental impact of the alternative sources of energy, we will be improving their quality of life by providing reliable AC power throughout the entire day for up to 5 buildings at a time per module. However, by increasing our technology’s energy capacity and penetration, we also increase our organization's logistical and customers’ financial obstacles. 

While we have developed robust supply chains and maintenance networks within Myanmar for our DCHS, the ACM requires a greater variety of parts, larger quantities, and more skilled labor, all of which can be difficult to coordinate in rural Myanmar in the aftermath of the military coup and global pandemic. Furthermore, while communities are looking for the greater energy access our solar microgrids provide, the larger upfront costs can discourage or limit their acceptance and proliferation within them. 

We seek support in coordinating larger and more complex supply chains in rural areas and developing simple and equitable financial pathways, such as microfinance partners, that would enable remote communities in Myanmar to adopt our technology through their own funds. We believe that Solve can help us achieve these logistical and distribution goals through their experience in servicing unpredictable regions, their expansive network of professionals in scaling technology and manufacturing, and most importantly, through the camaraderie of a peer group of Solvers striving to improve the lives of marginalized and disenfranchised communities across the globe.

Lastly, We also aim to validate our business model and make improvements by relying on the expertise and network of Solve mentors and supporters who have experience in scaling businesses in unpredictable markets.  

The Atutu Community-owned Microgrid (ACM) approaches the issue of electrification in remote Burmese villages from a variety of novel and improved angles. Technologically, the integration with an Internet of Things (IOT) digital cloud system enables our teams to effectively monitor and control our microgrids remotely. This provides our technicians the ability to optimize energy distribution to maximize efficiency, log data on household energy consumption, and respond to technical issues without our users having to identify the issue themselves. This integration is made possible by specifically utilizing electrical components with compatible modbus and CAN bus communication protocols. Furthermore, while the base-line ACM supplies five kilowatts of AC power from the inverter, the design has been modularized to enable simple scaling through stacking. If a community requires more than electrified dwellings, or expresses a desire for higher energy usage, multiple units can be installed for 10 kW, 15 kW, and beyond. Over time with enough data, we will also be able to provide forecasting services for both solar production and energy consumption of the communities, positioning us better to increase or decrease the size of our system proactively. 

To facilitate easier distribution and installation, we have also pre-fabricated our solar systems, performing as much manufacturing off-site as is possible and consulting local community members for the best supply routes. This approach allows our local team to effectively transport the materials by navigating local checkpoints to minimize risk and danger posed by armed conflicts in the country. Validated time and again by our installation successes, Atutu’s reliance on grassroots organizing produces reliable and sustainable outcomes for the villages and communities with which we interface. Our main goal in every project is to ensure that these remote communities are electrified in a self-sustaining manner that meets their specific energy needs. By leading the development, installation, and maintenance of the solar projects, communities do not require foreign intervention, but rather implement solutions tailored to their lived experiences and build lasting systems of skilled labor and energy independence.

We envision our community-driven work to accelerate energy access in Kachin can serve as a blueprint to improve the quality of life in other communities across Myanmar in sectors beyond energy, such as housing or employment. Our partner villages have shown that members of marginalized communities create and maintain the best solutions for themselves because of their cultural and geopolitical expertise. Solar power has more direct benefits as well, such as reduced or eliminated fuel costs, increased energy access throughout the day, cleaner air, and lower greenhouse gas emissions throughout the lifetime of a residency. Through Atutu’s successful partnership with communities throughout Kachin, we look to establish a new precedent in infrastructure development, one of equal collaboration and community control.

We organized our impact benchmark and projections in four categories: customer acquisition, technical reliability, social impact, environmental impact, and innovation. 

Customer acquisition refers to the number of people we are successfully able to provide energy. For this year, we plan to bring 300 people energy access through our pilot projects. The 2024 goal is 600. The 2025 goal is 1500. The 2026 goal is 3000. The 2027 goal is 6000. and the 2028 goal is 12000. In the next 5 years we aim to bring a total of 23400 people energy access. This may be a very conservative growth projection. Due to the instability driven by the military coup and armed conflicts, we have extrapolated the projection based on our past growth rate and the number of installations our team can accomplish in a year. With the right support and growth strategy, we can reach more people, faster. 

Technical reliability refers to the upkeep time of our system and the response time for incident management. Our goal is to achieve 90% up time for all of our energy system annually. We also aim to have less than one week of response time for maintenance requests or incident management. The combination of these two benchmarks is an accurate reflection of the reliability of our system. 

For social impact, we look for improvements in the lives of students, small business owners, and internally displaced populations. For the next five years, we will ensure that at least 50% of the people impacted will be from these three target groups. We will be providing services and products to the wealthy population to ensure financial sustainability of our organization; however, we are actively going to be focusing on equitable distribution of energy access across Myanmar. 

For environmental impact, our goal is to reduce the GHG emissions from unsustainable sources of fuel families are currently using by 50% using our solutions. With an estimated 16kWh of daily energy consumption from an average household, we want to ensure half of the energy is generated by solar. 

Lastly for innovation, while we do not have benchmark goals set, we do plan to develop technology, partnerships, and initiatives where we use our community microgrids as a foundation to build digital literacy programs for the community as well as digital banking systems for the communities we serve. This will require partnerships and coalition building once we have a proven record of reliability for our technology. 

Atutu’s progress can be organized into two distinct categories. On the one hand, increasing the proliferation of solar systems throughout off-grid villages in Myanmar directly aids in the fight against climate change and further promotes the adoption of clean, renewable energy. On the other, our solar systems help to improve the quality of life by extending electricity to communities previously lacking reliable access. A positive feedback loop forms as solar installments provide electricity throughout the day, improving the studies of students and easing day-to-day activities while providing economic opportunities for local technicians during installation and maintenance. 

Our progress towards these goals can be tracked through several methods. The first, our implementation tracker, keeps an accurate record of every solar installation Atutu performs, as well as tracking performance and repair needs. To date, Atutu has performed over 200 hundred solar system installations. Second, community interviews inform our staff of the change in daily life before and after solar energy is provided. Families consistently utilize more energy throughout the day, using this additional energy to power lights that improve residential safety and educational opportunities for students and power water pumps that greatly improves clean water access.

At its essence, Atutu looks to overcome inequalities in energy access in remote Burmese communities by starting and ending our projects with our partner communities’ priorities and experiences. Hundreds of thousands of people throughout Myanmar suffer from scarcity-based harm, a preventable type of harm caused by lack of access to basic needs such as food, shelter, water, employment, or electricity. In particular, when remote villages in Myanmar lack access to electricity, students miss out on academic opportunities, small businesses and farmers suffer from profit losses, and more hours are focused on meeting other basic needs, such as sourcing fuel or water. Atutu, with our team of Burmese and foreign volunteers, believes we can improve the quality of life for these communities’ residents by addressing one source of this scarcity-based harm, energy inequality. Every community microgrid we look to implement is brought upon by community desire, installed by members of the community, and maintained by local technicians. Because of the local involvement, the solar systems Atutu has helped in sourcing and installing see high levels of adoption, with minimal repairs necessary during their operational life thus far. Immediately, we do see the expected increase in quality of life due to the increased clean energy access. Based on our user interviews from our pilot installation of our community microgrid, students feel safer at night and have more opportunities to study, water is pumped electrically rather than by hand, noisy diesel generators are rendered obsolete, and plans are being made to install more vital amenities such as electric cooking plates and washing machines. In the long term, we hope that the ACM can continue to provide reliable, clean power for remote villages across Myanmar, powering large appliances, providing internet connection, reducing family fuel costs, and eliminating fossil fuel emissions for a whole generation in rural Myanmar. We understand that we cannot solve every obstacle that our partner communities face with solar power, as they face a variety of systemic obstacles. However, by breaking down barriers to equitable energy access, we can take one step closer to collective liberation and climate justice. 

The Atutu Community Microgrid is composed of a number of essential components in every robust remote solar system. A number of photovoltaic modules produce DC power that is converted into AC power in a five kilowatt inverter. After passing through distribution and overprotection circuits, the generated electricity is then used to either charge a central battery bank or provide real-time power to any number of machinery, such as lights, charging stations, water pumps, hot plates, and more. The solar industry being a mature industry, there is not a lot of room for innovation or risk. The manufacturing processes are fairly reliable and predictable. We can expect the MPPT charge controllers to effectively perform their duty of maximizing solar production. We can expect the batteries and inverters to meet their claimed efficiency specifications. The innovation of our system comes from the IOT enabled monitoring system and data-driven optimization tools we can develop. 

Our microgrid is equipped with a monitoring system which consists of a cellular modem, Raspberry Pi based computing module, and onboard storage. Smart data loggers then continually collect and publish system telemetry data to the cloud, where our technicians can monitor grid performance and send remote commands to remotely manage the system. With the data we collect, we can employ machine learning and data analytics to uncover long term trends that can inform the changes we make to the system. For instance, we can scale the system up or down depending on surplus or deficit of energy. We can predict energy production based on forecasting tools. We can predict the growth in energy demand based on population growth and forecasting tools that use previous consumption data. This data-driven approach to energy access will be the key in reducing barriers to adoption for the off-grid families. 

Atutu’s strengths and resilience come directly from our commitment to diverse teams, equitable outcomes, and inclusive practices. For example, Atutu’s leadership team encompasses a wide range of individuals, across origin and expertise. Atutu was founded on a commitment between Myanmar and the United States, and our leaders and volunteers represent this foundation, providing extensive cultural knowledge from Myanmar, America, and back and forth between the two. Our members also come from a variety of communities, with leaders such as Atutu Fellow solar technicians having ties to the same rural communities our solar systems are located in, project coordinators located in Yangon, the economic center of the country, and volunteers based in San Francisco, San Diego, and beyond in the United States. 

When it comes time to find new talent for Atutu, we meet new recruits where they are, valuing all the wisdom, experiences, and skills they possess. We seek out individuals with backgrounds in cultural knowledge, technical maintenance, operations, project management, and engineering and design. We do not, and never will, enforce any requirements in English proficiency, computer or technological experience, or education level. 

All of Atutu’s active practices are reflected in our goals for diversity, equity, and inclusion. We strive to be anti-colonialist, working with communities to heal from the harmful remnants of colonialism. We look to build coalitions across sectors and movements, recognizing the intersections of identity and experience within our members and our partner communities. Above all else, we uphold the community’s right to self-determination, prioritizing self-sufficiency and equitable design processes in our projects.

Atutu provides desirable solar energy products and services to off-grid communities in Myanmar that currently have limited choices in electrification. In regards to the Atutu Community-owned microgrid (ACM), our main product is a turnkey five kilowatt solar energy microgrid that can provide constant AC power for up to 5 households per unit; depending on community energy usage, total energy availability can scale upwards by adding additional units. 

Our key customers for the microgrid are the community leaders of our partner communities with whom we interface directly. These leaders reside in villages with no access to grid-quality electricity and are often forced to turn to diesel generators and other unsustainable fuels for energy. Atutu provides an economical, reliable, and environmentally sustainable alternative in the form of our ACM and our local consultation, installation, and maintenance services. Our customers choose our products over other alternatives because they provide a constant flow of high-quality electricity, can be managed remotely from our IOT communication devices, and are implemented from the ground up by trustworthy members of their community. In comparison, alternatives such as diesel generators require costly fuel that can be difficult to source in uncertain times, emit harmful noise and air pollution, and do not typically provide power through the night. When Atutu’s solutions are adopted, every member of the community, from young students to family elders, becomes a beneficiary from the increasing energy availability.

Atutu’s expenditures come in three forms: wages, transportation, and materials. Recently, Atutu transitioned from an entirely volunteer-based workforce to employing technicians, staff, and our executive; this has allowed us to compensate key members for the critical work that they do in electrifying rural Myanmar. Regarding materials, we source through economical distributors as much as possible, optimizing for installment within regions such as Kachin. Much of our communications, operational, and design work is still created by our volunteers.

Currently, we fund the operating costs and upfront costs of installations for marginalized communities through a mixture of grants and individual donations. We typically seek out 80% of our funding from the United States and 20% from Myanmar. Once installed, we charge our partner communities a carefully adjusted monthly fee based upon their gross energy usage and financial situation, ensuring that prices remain affordable and equitable. 

As we expand our customer segment, we are actively exploring potential pathways to ownership for partner communities. In this future scenario, communities would own their microgrid, while Atutu acts as the official technical support. We are currently developing partnerships with microfinancing organizations so we can offer microloans or downpayment assistance for the communities to eliminate the significantly high upfront cost associated with microgrids. 

By nature, solar microgrids have a high upfront cost and the financial benefits are accumulated over the lifetime of the system. As we are still in the pilot phase of our microgrids, Atutu will be taking on most of the upfront cost for communities so that they are able to adopt solar as the primary energy source.

Previously, the majority of our funds have come from individual donations and year-long or multi-year grants. In the near future, we plan to start selling our energy solutions for a profit to customers in Myanmar paying full price. In wealthy communities, solar demand is near an all-time high due. Revenue from full-price installations would be used to subsidize part of the cost of installations in off-grid communities that do not have the immediate funds upfront for larger scale solar systems like the Atutu Community Microgrid. 

We seek to also provide micro-financing options for off-grid communities to help them achieve financial and energy independence, while offsetting a portion of the cost of the installation. Finally, if any of our customers do not seek to purchase a system upfront, we have begun plans to implement an Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS) model, in which users only pay for the electricity they used in a pay period. This functionality is enabled by the inclusion of our IOT data loggers, which also track energy consumption as well as generation.

Below is a list of Atutu’s fundraising efforts from the past few years. We have received financial support from the following organizations: 

• $6,500 from UC San Diego Electrical & Computer Engineering Department (support for Atutu’s University Branch and R&D Expenses)

• $45,000 from individual donors

• $80,000 awarded from Echoing Green for the 2021 Echoing Green Fellowship 

• $50,000 awarded from IEEE Empower A Billion Lives competition for winning the “Enabling Technologies” track

• Upwards of $10,000 in in-kind contribution and pledges of in-kind contribution in hardware materials, professional services, and equipments. 

We have utilized these funds for the wages, hardware, and installation costs. In 2023, we plan to begin making sales to begin generating revenue. As we are setting up organization processes to make sales in Myanmar, we have already begun receiving inquiries and formed a waiting list with over 103 families requesting our solutions. The waiting list will serve as the target customer group for 2023. With the revenue we generate, we plan to invest it to form a marketing team in Myanmar so that we can begin acquiring new customers to meet our customer acquisition timeline.