A Participatory Gaming Approach To Community Energy Planning in Southeast Asia: Spreading Best-Practices on Community Engagement
Introduction
| Location: | Kampung Buayan, Kampung Terian and Kampung Timpayasa, East Malaysia |
| Technology: | Minigrids Minigrid planning tool |
| Costs: | Total: 20,500 € |
| WISIONS financial support: 20,500 € | |
| Partners Involved: | Energy Action Partners (ENACT)
Hydro Empowerment Network (HPNET) |
| Duration: | April 2017 – November 2017 |
The project, “A Participatory Gaming Approach to Community Energy Planning in Southeast Asia: Spreading Best Practices on Community Engagement”, applied a novel gaming approach to building community energy systems. It emphasised participation, collaboration and capacity-building within communities.
Exchange Need and Objective(s)
Conventional minigrid planning tends to limit the participation of households and communities and excludes social and organisational success factors. A lack of community engagement often leads to poor system design, and absence of local maintenance, system abandonment and limited community benefit. Thus, planning methods and tools need to be improved and expanded by including communal knowledge resources in the overall process. The project’s objectives were:
- to increase communities’ understanding of minigrid design, management and operation and to incorporate users’ input and knowledge into system design and management,
- to demonstrate The Minigrid Game as a participatory planning tool and to foster knowledge exchange on community engagement among the practitioners.
The Minigrid Game consists of a role-playing game where community members come together to simulate household energy consumption and make energy-related individual and collective decisions. These may include, for example, buying appliances, managing finances to pay electricity bills, setting energy tariffs or developing community infrastructure and services. A facilitator plays the role of the minigrid operator and manages system-wide operations while facilitating discussions and collective decision making. The cooperative game can only be won if the community chooses a minigrid system of an appropriate size and sets a tariff that prioritises the recovery of system costs, taking into account the ability to pay. The community must also limit its energy consumption within the capacity of the system. This gaming approach helps to ensure the system that is ultimately designed reflects actual energy needs as well as future expectations of populations.
Participants & Target Group(s)
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Three workshops were held with participants from three rural minigrid communities in East Malaysia. A fourth workshop was held online with remote participation from energy practitioners from the Southeast Asian member organisations of the Hydro Empowerment Network (HPNET). The project also reached out to the wider energy access community. The workshops were organised and facilitated by ENACT.
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