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!