Bandung, itb.ac.id- In 1968, ITB attracted the public’s attention when Iskandar Alisjahbana, lecturer and ITB Electrical Engineering alumnus completed the Palapa satellite as the first domestic communications satellite in Indonesia and third in the world, Electrical Engineering students have succeeded the exact same thing this year. A group of ITB batch 2005 Electrical Engineering students were inspired by the Palapa satellite and immortalized the name as the name of their team which owns the water generated electric development project (PLTA) in a village in region of Garut. It is a tradition that project planning would be done by every batch. At that time, batch 2005, who were considered freshmen were inspired by what was done by Iskandar Alisjahbana that became a great benefit to the community. Team Palapa was determined in achieving the similar. Through brainstorming and literature study, they decided that they were going to develop an electrical network specialized to generate picohidric water generated electric. The picohidric scale was in kW generated, which was below 10 kW. Electric is one of the main necessities of the community, yet many provinces have yet to have and electric supply. In a wide country like Indonesia with its great population volume, only 51% of the citizens get electric supply from PLN. Besides this, electric tariff is more expensive today. That was that Team Palapa felt. Why water generated electric? Fadolly Ardin, head of HME pointed out that the rivers in Indonesia have great potential. The flow is rapid enough and is not far from residential districts that it is of greater efficiency. Besides that, the payment is far cheaper than solar electric generators that is expensive and of low efficiency. What is most important is that PLTA technology is uncomplicated technology that they hope the residents can operate and develop it themselves. In the Community Development project is to materialize one of the higher education tridharma- to serve. With little experience or members, Team Palapa began looking for information about how to make a water electric generator. After learning for some time, a student in Mechanical Engineering’s master’s degree taught Team Palapa about the basics of an electric generator in December 2006. As the path now seemed clear they finally got sponsorship from an oil company. HME did not only get funding from Chevron but also vision about how to carry out the Community Development (CSR) so the project is useful and develops the closeness of students with the community. Team Palapa’s project was runner-up in the Engineering Award 2007 contest although many lecturers protested and questioned their capabilities and the accuracy of their data. At the beginning of their journey, PLTA development project picohidric scale experiences great obstacles including human resource-wise. The intense lecture schedule made this project doable only during the long holiday. In November 2007, Testantoro Randi Putra was the new project leader as Fadolly Ardin became HME President. In Randi’s hands the project went to the next level. Supervision was reinforced and was divided in two parts; community development and technical. Community development was in charge of social relations between Team Palapa and the villagers while technical was in charged of PLTA development. In the beginning the village that became the object was Cimaragang village in Cianjur region. But they already had electricity by PLN, thus the project was moved to Cilutung village, Jayamukti in Ciurip, Garut. Cilutung village was far from PLN and had minimum facilities. Villagers traveled far distances to go to school, MCK was the bare minimum and the local potential was yet to be explored. Electric was very expensive; Rp 5000 per ‘gantungan’ (term used by villagers for turning a light on) per month, one light was only 5 Watts and only is lit at night. Besides all this, they also happened to have the potential because it was located close to the river which was used to spin the turbine and the villagers accepted the proposal from them pretty well and agreed to cooperate. After several surveys from January- February 2008, the construction of the electric network began in Cilutung village. It included education and supply of electric generators for the villagers, location determination with the local villagers; soil release until finally generator, turbine and propeller were made. The work was divided in two stages, all which took one week. The concept Team Palapa was instilling was that the electric made by the generator was moved to a public place, like the mosque. From the mosque the electric was channeled to the residents’ houses. To make rationing and generator maintenance easier, the electric would only be used at night and only one electric switch connected. At the first test-run, the propeller, turbine and 3000 watt generator were used. The gross electric generated was only 1.6 kW, without friction deduction. Total electric could only light up 30 houses with each home only 15 watts. Team Palapa then decided that the second test run would use a 5000 watt generator. To this moment, this is still in process. With the PLTA picohidric, people only have to pay Rp 2000 for their electrical use and upgrading of their public facilities. Their project has not just stopped at Cilutung village but now they also have the Taman Pendidikan Ceria for the children there to strengthen the students’ relationship with the villagers. According to Aep Syaefudin, interaction and closeness with the villagers is what was most important, not just the fact that HME managed to generate electric and lit up a village. From the project, HME 2005 members have learnt lots lessons about how to interact with the community and the technical aspect of making their own electrical generator. In their experience of interacting with the community and were happy to have tried something for the people is something they wouldn’t forget. There was no doubt that the project has become a pride of HME and hopefully also for ITB that serving the people had become a reality. HME expresses their hopes that other faculties and courses would follow their footsteps and also take part in the Community Development and also how great it would if it became an integrated in ITB. “So that the institution of ITB does not fall,” quote Ochal. (prita-danar) Original article by kania.