What five Fijian sparkies taught me about remote, off-grid solar and battery systems

Wed, 2 Sep 2026 11:18:15 +1000

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://reneweconomy.com.au/what-five-fijian-sparkies-taught-me-about-remote-off-grid-solar-and-battery-systems/>

"When I was sent to the Yasawa Islands in Fiji to commission a 1.6
megawatt-hour off-grid solar battery installation across three remote island
resorts, I thought I had a good handle on what the job required.

Commission the system. Some maintenance training. Come home.

What I didn’t fully appreciate until I was standing on a remote Fijian island
with five local electricians and a tight schedule was that one of the most
challenging parts of this project had nothing to do with the hardware.

The system performed. That was never in question. The question was whether the
local sparkies left behind to run it would be able to keep it running – six
months later or even a year later when something unexpected happened and we
weren’t there.

That’s a very different problem to solve. And you can’t solve it by shipping a
manual."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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