Border Green Energy Team (BGET) has worked along the Thailand/Burma border since 2005 with a mission to implement renewable energy and sustainable technologies, and to demonstrate how these technologies are integral and economically viable aspects of improving livelihoods of those in need. BGET’s main focus is to provide solar electricity to medial clinics and school sin Karen villages and Internally Displaed People (IDP) camps. Free Burma Rnagers (FBR) is a multi-ethnic, humanitarian service movement. FBR brings help, hope and love to people in the war zones of Burma. Ethnic pro-democracy groups send teams to FBR jungle camp bases to be trained, supplied, and deployed in the areas under attack to provide emergency medical assistance and human rights documentation.

FBR Solar Home Training at Bueng Klueng

On March 2014, BGET and Green Empowerment partnered with FBR to provide two solar energy systems including two 130 Watt panels, two 12V/105Ah batteries, one charge controller box with 2 pig tails, four DC lights and a 300 W AUVIC inverter to the FBR office in Dooplaya District (K6 HQ) and the KDHW (Karen Department of Health and Welfare) clinic in Dooplaya District. We also replaced the old batteries from the previously installed the solar systems at New Generation, JSMK (Jungle School of Medical Kawthoolei) and Lay Tong Khu village. BGET delivered 16 12V/105Ah Trojan batteries to New Generation, 14 batteries for their DC system and two batteries for their AC system, six 12V/125Ah 3K batteries to JSMK, and five 12V/105Ah Trojan batteries to Lay Tong Khu Clinic, three for their DC fridge and two for their AC system.

Project Execution:

Prior to the training and implementation, BGET prepared all the equipment and tools for the systems, then BGET and FBR transported and delivered the necessary equipment to the FBR training site. The BGET team left from Mae Sot on the morning of March 10th, 2014 and arrived in Bueng Klung village in the evening.  There were 24 participants in the BGET training that took place March 11th through March 13th. On March 11th, the training opened by introducing BGET’s previous and current projects. The participants also learned about renewable energy and the process of the solar system. On March 12th, 13 participants returned to their base areas for the annual congress in Karen State. The remaining 11 participants continued the BGET training and learned the definition of energy, how solar panels work, basics of electricity, technology of solar sytem components such as battery, charge controller, and inverter, load management, using multi-meter and other tools, testing, and system demonstration on how to install the system properly On March 13th, the participants practiced installing solar systems lead by BGET trainers.

Going Forward:

There are a lot of clinics and schools located in ethnic states in Burma that are in need of healthcare support, education, and electricity. BGET hopes to collaborate again with FBR to improve those areas in the future in order to decrease lack of electricity, education, and healthcare. Please visit http://www.bget.org and http://www.freeburmarangers.org to learn more about our past projects and the way we operate.

This post was written by Htoo Htoo & Say Heh.