How one solar company is making Lombok's blackouts a thing of the past

If you’ve lived here long enough, you know the routine. Wifi blinks out. Fans and ACs go silent. Lampu mati! Darkness. Or sometimes, the sputter-choke of a diesel generator turning on outside, masking the frangipani-scented air with its stench of fumes. For most villas and businesses here, that generator has been the standard answer to an unreliable grid or hard-to-reach PLN connection. Marc Pop is convinced there’s a better alternative, one that arrives right on cue every morning.

Marc is the founder and managing director of Smart Energy Technology (SET), a solar and battery company he launched in 2020 and now runs from four offices across Indonesia, including bases in Kuta and, most recently, on Gili Air to serve a new solar electric boat operation. A self-described “Ecopreneur,” he began his career in renewable energy as a student in Germany, before immigrating to Australia to start his first eco-business and, finally, Indonesia in 2010. Here, he’s tried ventures in hydro, biomass, and even ocean current. Yet a dearth of funding, infrastructure and political will stymied his success in this coal-driven economy. funding, infrastructure and political will stymied his success in this coal-driven economy.

Here comes the sun

If nothing goes right, go left! Rather than giving up on renewables in Indonesia, he started thinking smaller: small systems helping consumers directly.

“A villa owner or a boutique hotel can decide they want solar on Monday and we are installing it by the end of the month. No committees, no government contracts, no permit that may never come. These are people who just want the lights to stay on, and they’re willing to invest to make that happen. And they can do the maths: going green pays back!” The second key was a piece of technology that soon changed the equation completely: lithium batteries. Suddenly, solar became even more workable for end-users. “To be available 24-7, solar needs batteries. But old tech batteries, the ones used in vehicles, were unreliable” explains Pop. “Lithium changed all that. A system can now run day and night for ten or fifteen years, with nobody touching it! That’s exactly what a business in Lombok needs.”

For new builds, going solar is simply the smarter investment. Anyone developing a property in Lombok already has to budget for backup power, because blackouts are a question of when, not if. The usual default is an expensive, foul-smelling and polluting diesel generator. A solar-and-battery system does the same job without the noise and fumes, while saving electricity and money everyday. The return on investment regularly exceeds 500%, while the peace of mind is priceless (especially given recent threats to the global energy supply). For remote plots where a PLN connection is complicated, unreliable, or expensive to arrange, the case for going off-grid is even stronger, with break even reached within a single year, while a system has a 30y lifetime.

Good for the planet, good for your wallet

The environmental argument hardly needs spelling out:. “In a perfect world, every client would choose solar because it’s the single most impactful thing an individual can do about climate change. Remember that 95% of a building’s CO2 emissions are from its energy use” Marc says. “And some do. But honestly, most choose it because it makes financial sense. The green part is a bonus. Although I like to think it feels good to run your AC as cold as you like, all day, without the guilt. ”

The country’s PLN grid still relies heavily on fossil fuels, especially coal. Every villa that powers itself from its own roof is one less load on what Pop bluntly calls “the dirty grid.” His ambition is to flip the default, establishing solar systems as the primary option for powering villas and businesses, rather than the dirty grid as first choice.

Reliable & seamless

SET designs, supplies, and installs entire systems so the panels, batteries, and electronics are matched to work together. The payoff is the moment a finished system switches on. “It really is a kind of magic, making energy from pure sunshine,” he says.

Marc’s enthusiasm for solar spills well beyond paying customers. Since its inception, SET has donated solar systems to community projects including SCBA, and supported many other worthwhile projects such as a local school in Gili Asahan and the Peduli Anak Foundation here in Lombok, which educates underprivileged children. Further afield, the company has equipped the Fair Future Foundation‘s “Truck of Life” to refrigerate medicines and vaccines in ultra-rural Sumba, and backed The SEA People in their work protecting the coral reefs of Raja Ampat. Pop is also quick to credit those who helped SET first find its footing in Lombok, singling out sustainable architect Paula Huerta from Bambook Studio as an early facilitator.

Ask him what he enjoys most about his solar life and the answer summarizes his whole proposition. “Pure freedom,” he calls it. He lives off-grid solar powered, drives electric cars, and rents electric boats (which he also now sells). For anyone weighing how to power a villa or business in Lombok, that is the offer on the table: a system you can largely forget about, that costs less to run than the alternative, and that lets the next blackout pass by completely unnoticed.