Lights is ON for Christmas in Long Lamai

Our Team have been working very hard with the community through "Gotong Royong" braving the hot Sun and  sometime drench in the rain for the last 3 days. TONIBUNG team consist of Patrick and James assisted by Moujus from kg Tiku to complete the 3 Phase transmission line from the power house to the village. Meanwhile, my self is doing training of operators and conducting last inspection of the civil structures and electro-mechanical equipment at the power house.

The system have since running for 48 hrs non stop, since i asked Gary Loh from Unimas opened the valve of the turbine to commemorate a simple official commissioning of the micro hydro system. So far so good, bearings of the turbine is not heating, no funny sound from the turbine, no major leaks on the penstock and tail race and the Digital load controller is working well. The heat from the Ballast loads have been turning the power house into a Sauna!. What do you expect when 10kw of power have been continuously for 48 hrs was dumped to the ballast load!

Everyone is getting excited and anxious to complete the transmission line. Our work was disrupted for a while when our main local champion for this project, William had a very bad cut on his right arm after a small piece of the porcelain insulator broke and fell on his arm. There was a very small cut, but it penetrated his artery causing a very bad bleeding. We had to rush him to Long Banga to get emergency treatment. Work resumed after William came back and everybody was relieved to know that the injury is not serious.

After working hard till 6.30 pm on this day 6th December 2013 the transmission line team completed the work. Now its time to connect the supply to the village. We are stationed in several locations along the transmission cable, everyone posed to listen to a short prayer from the village SIB Pastor through a walkie talkie broadcast from the power house. After the prayer, the main switch is flipped ON at the power house and hooray "let there be Light". At the community church the lights shined and the PA system roared filling the church with praise of Hallelujah!

I can see the jubilation in the community, smiles that you don't normally see every day. Some, especially my team got a sigh of relive."We did it" said William and Billy to me, i even see some tears of joy from them, especially those who worked very hard the last 12 months on this project. Against all odds, we did it!

this is just first few steps for this project there still more work that needs to be done. house wiring, Management issues, monthly collection, Operations etc. We will be back Long Lamai...in the mean time enjoy Christmas powered by Micro Hydro. May the light of christmas shines on your lives.. best of all no more noisy sound of those generators!