A 5.4 kWp Solar Installation for a Rural School in Chiangmai

Not every solar project is measured in payback years. In June 2025, our team travelled to Chiangmai, Thailand, to install a 5.4 kWp solar system for a rural school, helping lower its running costs and giving students a working example of renewable energy on their own roof.

What we installed

The system pairs Trina Solar panels with a Huawei inverter supplied through our partner JJ-Lapp, the same Tier-1 equipment we fit on landed homes and commercial roofs in Singapore. We chose it here for the reason we choose it at home: it is proven, efficient, and built to keep working for decades with very little attention, which matters even more at a rural site far from easy servicing.

The impact, in numbers

Based on typical northern Thailand sunlight, a 5.4 kWp system generates roughly 7,000 kWh of electricity a year. For a grid-connected school, that solar offsets power it would otherwise buy, saving on the order of 28,000 to 30,000 baht a year, about S$1,100 to S$1,200, on its electricity bill. Put another way, that is enough each year to buy a few hundred textbooks or exercise books for its students, money that now goes back into teaching rather than utilities. Across the 25-year-plus life of the panels, those savings compound into a meaningful sum for a small school.

The system also avoids roughly 3.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, comparable to the amount absorbed by well over a hundred mature trees, so the school teaches sustainability while practising it.

Figures are estimates based on the system size, typical local sunlight and grid tariffs, not the school's measured bills.

A classroom on the roof

Beyond the savings, the system is a teaching tool. Students can see how sunlight becomes electricity, watch generation change with the weather, and connect a lesson in class to something real above their heads. Hands-on exposure like this is often where an interest in engineering and clean energy begins.

The same standards, wherever we work

Rezeca has installed solar across Singapore since 2009, with more than 1,500 installations and over 45 MWp to date. Whether it is a landed home in Bukit Timah or a school in Chiangmai, the method is the same: assess the roof, size the system honestly for how the building actually uses power, and install with Tier-1 equipment and our own experienced team. Carrying that discipline to a site far from our usual support is a fair test of how we work, and one we take seriously.

Part of how we give back

The Chiangmai school is one of several community initiatives Rezeca supports, alongside off-grid solar for village schools in Laos, senior volunteering with the Caregiving Welfare Association, and Project Solar Proa at NUS. In 2025, this ongoing work was recognised when Rezeca was named a Company of Good by Singapore's National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre.