Eradicating Energy Poverty in Haiti

The community in Les Anglais is slowly starting to rebuild. A recent survey of our customers said about 90% had some housing structure in place. One of the most pressing energy needs identified in the survey was phone charging, with over 90% of our customers saying they needed a way to change their phones. Unfortunately, even though we are hard at work planning for reconstruction, we haven’t been able to restore full service yet. However, we do have generation capacity with more than enough power to charge cell phones. 
 
We have started to offer phone charging at the generation site to address community wishes as we get back in the swing of things. Rosane, the Enèji Pwòp Grid Ambassador is managing this. We’re starting slowly at first, just a few hours a day a couple days a week and charging rates in line with the local market and not by the kWh. We may open up charging to other items (laptops, batteries, radios, etc) if there seems to be a need. While what we really want is to be able to restore the same level of service we were providing before, we’re happy we can help out the community in the meantime!

The population of Les Anglais is “thirsty for electricity”, as they phrase it. We are trying to address one of the primary needs the community identified - phone charging, but there is more need. Ice is another commodity that is wanted but limited in Les Anglais as it requires a freezer and ultimately a generator and diesel to operate. Lighting is also an issue and solar lamps that were distributed by Enèji Pwòp proved to be the main source of lighting to many customers (37%), followed by kerosene lamps (36.1%).

"Electricity is addictive," explained one survey respondent, "Once one has access to it, one struggles without it." The Les Anglais community is struggling to adapt to the temporary absence of grid power by reverting to kerosene and candles for lighting. People are paying third parties for services such as phone charging that, with grid power, they used to have in their own homes. Customers expressed they are anxious to have Enèji Pwòp electricity back in Les Anglais. While they were initially afraid we would leave the community after the storm, these fears were assuaged when they saw the field team at work gathering downed materials and holding community meetings.

Funding setbacks have delayed our re-building plans. However, we are working hard to be able to rebuild as soon as possible. The community of Les Anglais is ready and so are we!

When Hurricane Matthew made landfall in Haiti via Les Anglais, EarthSpark's team, grid, and customers were at the very center of the storm. In the days before the storm, we prepared the grid the best we could. We let the community know in advance that we would have to shut down the grid so that they could charge their phones and radios, we placed sandbags at the generation site, shut off the grid and found safe spaces for our staff. Aside from preparing immediately before the storm hit, we had built a high-quality system. Our solar panel array was rated for a category 4 storm.  We had also made sure not to connect houses to the grid that were in precarious locations. One area of town that we didn’t connect to the grid, Bo Lagon, was sadly wiped away before the storm even hit.

After three long days of radio silence, we were able to re-establish communication with our team and confirmed that all EarthSpark and Enèji Pwòp team members were safe and accounted for.  Most Les Anglais homes and businesses were destroyed or severely damaged. Trees have been reduced to stumps and many crops lost. We don't yet know the full toll of casualties. So far, people are taking the situation in stride, sheltering where they can, and relying on well water.

The EarthSpark microgrid fared comparatively well. We lost ~40% of the solar panels, but the generation system is largely intact. Most of the homes and businesses connected to the grid were destroyed, so we will plan in tandem with reconstruction efforts to re-establish the poles-and-wires distribution system of electricity for the town.

EarthSpark works on energy, not relief. So in the days immediately after the storm we reached out to various relief organizations to offer to retool the generation system quickly to support their relief work near the generation site. However, in the hierarchy of needs in the aftermath, electricity wasn’t high up there. Food, shelter, and clean water were at the top of the list. We kept asking what people needed us to power but no one was biting. After about a week the community let us know that they needed cold drinks and a way to watch football matches, which was a welcome sign that life was slowly going back to normal.

As relief took place, we saw how lack of infrastructure and planning – poor roads and lack of stored food supplies to name a few, made reaching those in need more difficult. To break from the difficulties of systemic poverty, infrastructure is so crucial. We see integrated electrification as part of a bigger picture of 'integrated economic and environmental resilience' that links to other sectors like roads/transportation, communications, and building materials/practices.  We need to be building sustainable, long-term infrastructure, including sustainable energy services that can unlock economic potential with higher levels of power so that we aren’t always just meeting basic needs in developing countries.    

EarthSpark is working on getting our microgrid powering homes and businesses as and when the community rebuilds. It’s not easy and there is a lot of risk involved, but our work also holds so much potential for not only solving energy access in Haiti but also unlocking deeper economic security and quality of life for the regions we serve. Thank you so much for your support. Many of you also donated on Giving Tuesday, increasing your impact through matching funds. We couldn't do our work without great supporters like you.