For poor mountainous communities rich with rivers and streams, 'micro-hydro' energy may be a solution to the power imbalance between city and countryside.

With upwards of seven kilograms of tools loaded in his knapsack, engineering consultant Ghanashyam Ranjitkar often found himself travelling by foot to remote villages in his native Nepal to repair small-scale hydro equipment used to generate electricity. He recalls one time when, after a long and grueling trek, he had to hike all the way back for spare parts after the installation blew up.

Now living in Toronto, Ranjitkar was a "travelling trouble-shooter" for these 'micro-hydro' projects because, like many Third World countries, only about ten to fifteen percent of Nepal's citizens are on the main power grid. And most of those are situated in large urban areas including the capital Kathmandu. The rural majority, scattered across the Himalayan mountains, have little or no access to electricity. It is too expensive from a market perspective to expand the reach of the grid, says Ranjitkar.

That's why micro-hydro is billed as a renewable, off-the-grid alternative to this power imbalance between city and countryside. It has been described as the most practical, cleanest and cheapest form of energy for poor communities living in countries blessed with mountainous or hilly terrain - and the rivers and streams that flow downstream.

Nepal certainly falls into that category, and more than one thousand small power plants have already been built.

Of course not all isolated communities in the Third World are bereft of electrical power. But in many rural areas of the South, electricity - such as that produced by diesel generators - is prohibitively expensive. Batteries can cost a week's wages. And lighting that comes from cheaper kerosene lamps is poor and the smoke causes respiratory problems.

"Rural communities in places like Peru have to spend quite a bit on lighting, on things such as kerosene, wax candles or batteries," explains Teodoro Sanchez, the manager of the Latin American division of the U.K.-based Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) a major promoter of micro-hydro in developing countries.

So if batteries are too expensive, kerosene too dangerous and the government power grid too far away, micro-hydro can fill the power void, proponents say.

However, for micro-hydro it's all about 'location, location, location' - the best place to set up a facility is in the vicinity of a creek with some reasonable elevation of land. This makes the schemes particularly attractive to areas such as the Himalayas or the Andes of South America.

Micro-hydro generally consists of a stand-alone facility that generates enough electricity to fill the needs of a rural village - and nothing more. It is not to be confused with the massive hydro-dams also found in the Third World, destined to generate hundreds of megawatts for urban centres or for export.

The people relocated - sometimes forcibly - to make way for these mega-projects rarely reap the benefits. And the environmental costs of flooding entire ecosystems will not be fully known for generations.

Instead, a small-scale hydro project is designed to produce something in the range of six kilowatts of power, sufficient to drive a grinding mill for grain and to provide lighting. Robert Mathews, a Canadian consultant and hydro engineer, says a 16-kilowatt project can cost upwards of $100,000, but that this is a bargain compared to the more than half million dollars one might pay for a solar energy project offering an equivalent amount of power.

President of Appropriate Energy Systems, based in Chase, British Columbia, Mathews has helped set up micro-hydro installations with small non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Nicaragua. "The technology hasn't changed much in 40 years except for the electronic controllers, which boost performance and lower the price [for an installation]."

Basically, hydro power comes from water flowing downhill (via a stream or human-made pipe or channel) that turns a turbine connected to a generator, which in turn is connected by wire to people's homes and shops.

ITDG, an NGO whose motto is "Practical Answers to Poverty," is the granddaddy of micro-hydro. Founded in 1966 by the late British economist Dr. E.F. Schumacher, author of the classic development tome Small is Beautiful, the organization takes a grassroots approach to alleviating poverty.

Schumacher believed that the introduction of capital intensive and large-scale technologies into developing countries, where there is often a lack of money, technical expertise and sizable consumer markets, made no sense. Better, he thought, are less expensive and more labour intensive technologies that are easier to run and fix. These 'appropriate technologies' also create more jobs, the thinking goes.

Micro-hydro produces power, and electricity can raise the bar of what is possible in an impoverished community.

The impact of micro-hydro starts with something basic like the introduction of radio and television into people's homes, says Teodoro Sanchez, based in Lima. "It gives them access to information. They feel integrated with the country and the society."

Once electricity arrives, the community becomes almost unrecognizable from its previous incarnation, continues Sanchez. "If you visit the community three to four years after the installation what you find is lighting at each home and children furthering their education, and also small businesses like shops, welding machines, milling and carpentry. Instead of having to walk two to three hours to mill your grain, you can do it here in your village."

"You can also see social benefits like better education services and better health services."

For those who decry the impact of outside influences that are a by-product of micro-hydro, Sanchez counters that the results are more positive than negative. And besides, he says, "we can't say no to people if they want electricity."

Second to China in numbers of micro-hydro installations set up in rural communities, Nepal is a major laboratory for this technology. Unfortunately, many of the initial projects failed, says Ghanashyam Ranjikar, recalling his ten years in the field, including a stint at ITDG.

Often it is a case of insufficient support or no training for the rural villagers in the use and repair of the technology. Loath to criticize specific organizations, villages or individuals that may be at fault, he does say that some aid people "stay in their offices in Kathmandu with their Pentiums and four-wheel drives and never visit the villages."

Ranjikar says that the national Nepalese government has now cleaned up the process by saying it will only subsidize projects following proper procedures and offering sufficient support. And if it were not for a Maoist insurgency in the countryside, which has frightened off many NGOs, he would be more optimistic about future micro-hydro projects in Nepal.

Groups like ITDG and Oregon-based Green Empowerment insist on several preliminary stages before setting up a micro-hydro project. These steps involve working closely with residents on a feasibility study, an assessment of local power needs, the establishment of cottage industries to boost local incomes and the training of local people in the maintenance and operation of the installation.

A facility can take from six months to three years to build, depending upon the circumstances and experiences of the individual community.

The spark for a micro-hydro project is usually financial assistance from a government or international aid agency, but in the long run the aim is to make the community and the project self-sustaining, explains Joseph Richards, a program manager for Green Empowerment.

Among the sources of revenue is a modest charge for the electricity - determined by the community - paid from the boost in local incomes due to the various cottage industries such as knitting clothes, baking and craft-making.

One of the many challenges is that local people may not have the skills to market their products or have decent roads to transport them to larger towns, says Sanchez. "They also are not used to negotiating a sale with [more sophisticated wholesalers and merchants]."

If ITDG is perceived as pragmatic and non-political, the newer and smaller Green Empowerment appears slightly more radical in its social justice approach to micro-hydro development. The organization grew out of the Ben Linder Memorial Fund named after the American hydroelectric engineer who died at the hands of the U.S.-based Contra rebels in Nicaragua while working on an aid project in a remote area.

Green Empowerment has focused on building micro-hydro projects for the marginalized in Central America and Southeast Asia, and the organization waits to be approached by local people or an NGO before getting involved. The latest effort is a ten-kilowatt facility for a village of indigenous 'Kenyah' people in the upper river region of Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo.

After being displaced, ironically, by a larger hydroelectric project, these villagers set up a new home in Long Lawen, which is part of their ancestral lands in Borneo. But they relied largely on diesel generators for such applications as lighting, rice milling and freezers for meat storage. Micro-hydro, introduced this year, will cut energy costs by half and reduce the dependence on a polluting technology.

In addition to the power plan, Green Empowerment is working with the 70 families in the village on community mapping to establish a legal claim on their territory. "It gives them legitimacy on their own and enables them to protect certain areas of their land," says Joseph Richards.

It is not hard to find among a group of villagers in the Third World at least some who "are mechanically inclined and have taken a motor apart," explains Richards, personally involved in the Borneo project. "And at the end of the day they will have learned how to wire a house, string line a pole, and maintain and operate a power facility."

But on the matter of who actually owns and runs the micro-hydro facilities, some philosophical differences bubble up among the specialists.

ITDG finds that micro-hydro works best if small private entrepreneurs are involved, even if the community technically owns the facility, says Teodoro Sanchez. "We find not only in Peru but also in other parts of the world that community operated and managed schemes are difficult because it sort of becomes a bureaucratic thing [where] it is of everybody and of nobody."

Richards agrees that the entrepreneurial approach has worked in some areas. But he says that Green Empowerment's preference for a community-owned solution stems from a concern that the entire village should benefit from the money generated by the micro-hydro project, not a select few. But it takes more work to encourage a collective form of decision-making, he admits. "There is a lot more development that occurs when you are trying to work based on a community as opposed to just one person saying he is going to build a facility."

What both ITDG and Green Empowerment share is a commitment to protecting the environment.

The ITDG's "run of the river" approach, where the diverted water flow is recycled back into the river or stream, has won praise from the Berkley California-based International Rivers Network. The IRN takes the position that both large and small dams can destroy fish habitat and displace local people. That is why "small dams that clog rivers are starting to be dismantled in the U.S.," says IRN campaigns director Patrick McCully. But micro-hydro projects of approximately five kilowatts spread sufficiently apart along a watercourse are generally harmless, he believes.

The only damming that occurs might involve a two to four foot mini-dam or weir that initially blocks the water and creates a pond before it goes down the pipe to the turbine. But this should not affect the underwater life because "within these steep streams, there are no fish," explains Robert Mathews of Appropriate Energy Systems.

In a typical micro-hydro project, electricity is created by the diversion of water from an elevated stream or river that heads down a pipe into the turbine and generator in a constructed powerhouse. "It is important to know that in most cases the small hydro scheme only needs a small part of the water which flows into the river," adds Teodoro Sanchez. Surprisingly, Canada's vast array of hydro expertise has not been at the forefront of overseas micro-hydro development - that honour goes to the Brits and the Danes. Perhaps it's because Canadian hydro projects tend to be very large in scale. The Alberta-based Pembina Institute, a leading environmental organization, is seeking to alter this Canadian legacy. By taking advantage of the climate change and clean energy funds now available (through such international bodies as the Global Environmental Facility) Pembina hopes to set up its own small-scale power projects.

However, Francois Vitez, a Sherbrooke engineer who spent three years working on small hydro projects in Nepal, warns that a change in attitudes must transpire at large international climate change funders. Often they will not bother with rural electrification efforts that are tiny and modest in terms of investment.

"For them a $100,000 [micro-hydro project] is so little that they won't look at it. It is probably their cost to look at a project," he says.

But maybe now is the time, with all this talk of Kyoto and climate change, that sustainable, off-the-grid power alternatives can become more than just scattered success stories, and help level the power imbalances within our global society.

Paul Weinberg is a freelance writer based in Toronto.
Written September 2002.