[NEW Report]: Accelerating Off-Grid Electrification – Lessons from Haiti for Emerging Markets

Haiti faces critical challenges in meeting its electrification objectives. The country’s six million unelectrified make up nearly 40% of the total access gap in Latin America and the Caribbean. In rural Haiti – where 2% of the population has access to electrical energy – communities rely primarily on biomass and imported fossil fuels to meet everyday energy needs. This reliance undermines efforts to improve health, wellbeing and livelihoods, to grow the domestic economy and achieve energy security, and to build resilience against the worsening impacts of climate change.

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The following sections evidence eight key findings:

• Lighting and small electronics rapidly transition to electricity with mesh-grids, but cooking remains biomass-based. The introduction of mesh-grids has led to a rapid transition to electricity for lighting and small electronics. However, cooking remains predominantly biomass-based, highlighting the need for targeted support to enable a shift to electric cooking among newly electrified households.
• Mesh-grids can accommodate a diverse range of productive activities, but require adaptation for higher-demand applications. While mesh-grids provide sufficient energy for many household and small-business uses, increasing their capacity is key to enabling more demanding applications, particularly in agricultural and service sectors.
• Productive users drive grid profitability, with substantial room for growth. For 27% of Alina Enèji users, electricity has enabled new economic ventures like freezer use and phone charging, which drives increases in revenue for both users and the supplier. Support for appliance access and financing and targeted outreach to local institutions can help identify and capitalize on diverse productive-use opportunities.
• Electricity tariffs between $0.60-$0.90 per kWh provide savings over existing fuel sources. Alina Enèji’s electricity tariffs are comparable with gridbased alternatives and offer fuel savings over non-electric energy sources like kerosene and charcoal. Users also value the service for perceived improvements in quality of life. As with most newly-electrified communities, affordability issues remain which must be addressed for more vulnerable users.
• Mesh-grid customers have the potential to increase their energy consumption. Current usage patterns indicate that Alina Enèji’s customers are primarily utilizing lower energy access tiers (MTF Levels 1 and 2), despite the capacity for higher consumption. This underutilization represents a key challenge, but also a significant opportunity for growth
  and impact.
• Mesh-grids provide high resilience and reliability while reducing dependence on volatile fossil fuel supply chains. Mesh-grids have demonstrated remarkable adaptability and growth in the face of Haiti’s complex challenges, showcasing their potential as a scalable electrification solution for demanding environments. Their rapid installation rate, even amidst logistical hurdles and fuel shortages, underscores their resilience. While their performance during natural disasters remains to be fully assessed, their modular design suggests a promising capacity for quick recovery and repair.

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