12/04/2026

theSunday Special II ON SUNDAY APR 12, 2026

should be a short journey into nearly two hours. This is how isolation takes shape, not as a single barrier, but a series of small distances that add up. Such conditions have kept electricity out for decades. Clean water, healthcare and other basic services have arrived unevenly and sporadically. Families learned to live within limits. They grew what they could. Vegetables came from the land. Meat came from outside, when it could be afforded and carried in. Without refrigeration, food could not be kept for long. Ice melted within a day. Meals were planned with restraint. “The village below us has electricity. But up here, life is much harder,” Kriangkrai said. The difference is measured not just in convenience, but in possibility. harder.” “ The arrival In April 2026, something shifted. It did not arrive with fanfare. No grid lines were strung across the mountains, and no large infrastructure carved its way in. Instead, it came in parts – solar panels, battery units, cables carried and assembled piece by piece. GoRental Global had chosen Huay Nam Rin as part of its Energy Resilience Initiative, installing a modular, off-grid system designed to do what the national grid had not yet done – reach the last mile. “For families here, reliable electricity changes more than just the light in a room,” said founder and managing director Colin Peh. “It affects how children study, how families live and whether a community feels it has a future. “If we already have the technology, the question is where else it should go. It shouldn’t stop at commercial events, it should reach communities that need it most.” The system comprises 60 solar panels and 31 portable battery units, delivering 40 kilowatts of distributed renewable capacity – enough to power lighting, phone charging and essential household needs. The numbers are precise. The change they describe is less so. The village below us has electricity. But up here, life is much

Solar panels installed across Huay Nam Rin mark a turning point for a community that lies far beyond the reach of the national grid. – KIRTINEE RAMESH/THESUN

Bringing light to life after dark in mountain village

At Huay Nam Rin, a small village in northern Thailand, night once shaped the way residents lived as the entire community relied on kerosene lamps for children to read and housewives to cook ... until a brilliant shift happened A S THE sun slips behind the mountains of Huay Nam Rin in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, the air cools and the village softens. BY KIRTINEE RAMESH newsdesk@thesundaily.com

“Cooking, studying, safety... everything was harder. We could only rely on what we could do with our hands and our eyes in the dark.” Darkness here was not just the absence of light. It was a limit. Children bent over schoolbooks they could barely see. Meals prepared carefully, every movement measured against the risk of fire. Beyond the doorway, the night pressed in... thick, unlit and absolute. And yet, the village endured. There were evenings when the darkness did not matter as much. People gathered anyway, grilling meat over open flames, sharing stories that travelled easily through the night. In a place without electricity, connection became its own kind of light. The long way in Getting to Huay Nam Rin requires dedicated intention. The village lies about 45km from Chiang Mai city, but distance here is not measured in kilometres alone. The final stretch narrows and breaks into a rough, uneven climb, turning what

Children drift back from dusty paths where they spent the day barefoot and laughing. Chickens settle into the earth. Dogs curl beneath stilted wooden homes. Thin ribbons of smoke rise from evening fires. For years, this was the hour when life began to fold in on itself. Inside dim wooden houses, families gathered close, sometimes ten to a room, sleeping side by side on hard floors. There are no fans to ease the heat, no switches to flick. Only the unsteady glow of kerosene lamps, their light too faint to fill a room and too dangerous to ignore. “The biggest challenge here has always been living without electricity,” said village head Kriangkrai Suya.

Peh said the Huay Nam Rin solar microgrid project reflects a wider ambition to bring practical energy solutions to remote communities across the region. – KIRTINEE RAMESH/THESUN