RE firm brings light to remote island

MANILA, Philippines - A more environment-friendly and practical technology, compared to other equipment running on fossil fuels, is providing adequate power to rural residents of a remote fisherman’s island village in Palawan.

Solutions Using Renewable Energy (SURE) Inc. has installed its portable 20kW biomass gasifier generator set, also known as the Power Pallet, manufactured by All Power Labs,  to generate electricity for Green Island in Palawan.

The genset utilizes dry coconut shells which are abundantly scattered in the area.

According to SURE’s AVP for Operations, Claire Lee, no more than three-fourths of the under 400 households on the island are provided with lighting  for just four hours, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., daily by two costly purok-owned 10 KVA diesel-fueled generator sets.

“Today, the remaining one-fourth of the total number of families living on Green Island who never had electricity in their homes is  being powered eight to 15 hours a day by SURE’s Renewable Energy Hybrid Microgrid System that includes the Power Pallet which runs on free waste organic materials,” Lee said during a showcase presentation held at the National Engineering Center in UP Diliman.

For a runtime of one hour, the Power Pallet consumes 18 kilograms of biomass weight to have a power output of 15 kilowatt hours.

Lee added that aside from giving access to substantial energy for necessary appliances of some two hundred people, the Power Pallet also runs the island village’s ice flakes maker that is essential to the residents’ main livelihood and its brackish water desalination system that supplies 800  liters of potable water per day.

Green Island used to be dependent on the main city of Roxas, Palawan for  drinking water and ice, requiring around one ton every day to preserve, store and transport their fish.

Furthermore, the people of the island village have learned to use the heat produced by the Power Pallet for drying seaweeds which only takes five hours compared to their previous  practice of sun drying which takes two days. 

SURE’s Green Island project is in collaboration with the USAID, Palawan Council for Appropriate Rural Technology and the Local Government Unit of Roxas, Palawan.