This piece is written by Livia Liannasari, Nathania Azalia, Aqwika Deviena Hermawan, Dr. Asmus Randløv Rungby, Marcel Nicky Arianto
As a regional flagship infrastructure project, the ASEAN Power Grid (APG) envisions integrating the power grids of its Member States. Through comprehensive trade mechanisms and strong grid infrastructure, this cross-border network aims to ensure regional energy security and sustainability on the basis of mutual benefits, especially for hard-to-reach communities. The common yes/no metric—“Do you have access to electricity?”—is often inadequate. A community may be connected to the grid, but if that power is unstable, unaffordable, or insufficient for daily needs, then access is nominal, not transformative.
The “P” in APG should not only be about power, but also about people and progress. By bringing the community's perspective into infrastructure planning, the APG will not just be an end, but rather as a means to an end, to ensure inclusive and equitable access through shared energy resources
Beyond Infrastructure: Centring People
The APG is a core focus of the ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation (APAEC). To date, eight out of the 18 grid-to-grid APG interconnection projects have been in operation, contributing to a regional electricity transmission capacity of around 2.8 gigawatts (GW). Understanding ASEAN’s diverse energy sources, including renewables, a stable foundation can help grids deliver reliable access to cross-border and domestic energy supply.
To ensure these intentions are concretely realised is a complex task of turning technical progress into long-term everyday benefits. Already, the APG has started to open new channels of energy access to rural and isolated areas. Lao PDR exports 30 MW of power to supply Tachileik in Myanmar, an area far from the national grid. Similarly, during the wet season, Lao PDR delivers electricity to meet energy needs in Western Cambodia’s remote areas.
Maximising APG-facilitated interconnectivity and the increased electricity sharing it enables can be done by considering communities’ varying needs, level of economic affordability, and resources available to each country. Urban communities likely prioritise electricity for cooling and digital infrastructure, but rural communities in ASEAN may use electricity to power large, mechanised farming tools (e.g. rice threshers, bean sorting, irrigation pumps). Local geography and productive economies are crucial variables in this. Malaysia, for example, have recognised the varied needs of their communities through implementing their versions of local power supply schemes such as prioritising rice production in one village to usage of more advanced information media for economic activities. These different needs will affect how much electricity communities demand and how the infrastructure needs to be configured to accommodate them.
The APG can enhance these measures through cross-border resource trade, supplying communities in border regions through power flows from neighbouring countries. This way, local communities gain ease of access to stable, reliable, and affordable energy supply.
Understanding the People’s Dynamic Needs
As electrification rates rise, shifts in lifestyle among the people could occur. Labour-saving devices such as washing machines, freezers, and rice cookers may be added to households. Without considering this factor, initial calculations of a community’s energy demands may not accommodate the gradual shifts of the population’s energy utilisation.
This perspective calls for a more context-sensitive approach to planning the energy supply and demand to identify the projected grid extension and cross-border infrastructure, as well as maintenance and evaluation of the APG and the local grids. Apart from different community needs, electricity needs inside a given community may vary. For some, powering basic appliances is crucial to reducing housekeeping labour; for others, agricultural processing, communication, or small-scale enterprise are central to maximising economic prosperity. Attempts to evaluate success, therefore, need to reflect this diversity—focusing on service reliability, infrastructure longevity, and the capacity of users.
In this light, electricity access must be understood as a dynamic and continual process, where the quality and relevance of access are just as important as infrastructure availability.
Moreover, ensuring that regional grid integration delivers real community benefits requires looking beyond expansion. In order to ensure the actual community benefits, expanding access must also take into account the quality of power delivered to the communities. Expanding energy access need to be accompanied by measures that strengthen grid performance, such as deploying advanced metering infrastructure and protection systems, and real-time monitoring and control equipment. By pairing expansion with reliability, the APG is better positioned to provide communities with electricity that is both available and usable.
Ultimately, the APG’s true potential lies in its capacity to support inclusive, resilient, and sustainable development across ASEAN. The ASEAN Member States should conduct consultations and engagements with local communities throughout the development of the APG projects, from planning to the implementation stage. This is important to perfectly capture the realities of community concerns and needs, forming an open and inclusive process towards an enhanced electricity access. Establishing a grievance mechanism can also support community participation, providing a platform to express concerns and facilitating timely mitigation measures—creating an institutionalised participatory process.
Electric facilities need continuous monitoring and maintenance after the initial development. There must be a clear mechanism for communities to monitor the performance of the energy supply that they receive. These mechanisms need to be able to help ensure that problems like outages, equipment failures, or safety concerns are addressed promptly, guaranteeing responsiveness to community needs.
Overall, by acknowledging that energy needs vary across contexts, understanding that people’s direct participation is pivotal, and that infrastructure must be adaptable, the APG can become a foundation for social and economic opportunity. To reach that point, the APG must align its implementation with the broader objective it is meant to serve—improving people’s lives across the region.
