Desa Hidrogen Hijau: A Dual-Track Methodology for Village-Scale Energy Transition Integrating Social and Technical Development in Coastal Bali

Energy-transition research lacks methods to integrate technical development with community social and cultural realities. Technology-first interventions in the Global South often fail socially, yet literature offers no tested model for structuring recursive exchanges between community insights and engineering. This paper tests a dual-track methodology—parallel Community and Technology Development workstreams coupled by structured feedback loops—within a village-scale "sandbox." Here, energy systems are co-developed with residents, academic, enterprise, and government actors, orchestrated by an embedded fab lab. Evaluating a two-year (2023–2025) participatory action-research study of the Desa Hidrogen Hijau (Green Hydrogen Village) project in Serangan, Bali, we ground the work in multiscalar village reading, commons governance, and appropriate-technology principles. Across five co-developed interventions, parallel development surfaced design parameters absent from prior specifications. We demonstrate that the Balinese banjar, anchored by the bale banjar, functions as both governance infrastructure and a replicable substrate, proving energy transition can be built on existing culture, not imposed as standalone hardware. Finally, we document an enthusiasm-to-maintenance gap, highlighting the need for a third track of institutional embedding.