Electricity in Haiti

Something that has been notable by its absence in the discussion of the horrible events in Haiti this month is any discussion of how the earthquake has affected electric service there.

Some cursory research suggests an answer: Electric service in Haiti was so bad before the earthquake that restoring it is hardly a priority in light of other, pressing humanitarian needs.

According to a 2008 report from The Economist, Haiti has one of the lowest rates of energy consumption per capita in the world. The state-owned electricity monopoly, Electricité d'Haïti, oversaw (prior to the earthquake) a highly unreliable system that relied on fossil fuel for 75 percent of the electricity supply, with the rest coming from hydroelectric facilities that were highly vulnerable to drought.

According to the magazine, Haiti's largest hydroelectric facility, the Péligre dam, was built in 1971 and served Port-au-Prince. The facility had a theoretical capacity of 54 megawatts but had never achieved anything like that level of output.

The magazine reported that Electricité d'Haïti had several years ago contracted with two private companies for electricity supply. Alstom served Port-au-Prince with 50 megawatts of capacity and Sogener committed to providing electricity for 12 hours a day to the towns of
Les Cayes, Gonaïves, St Marc and Petit-Goâve. According to this 2008 report, most businesses were forced to invest in their own back-up systems -- to the tune of as much as 60 megawatts altogether.

Sogener had plans to add an additional 10 megawatt generating unit in the capital this month. It appears that this capacity as well as Sogener's prior contributions to Haiti's electricity grid were in the form of diesel power. According to a 2008 report in the Houston Chronicle, Haiti's electricity sector was then burning nearly 3.5 gallons a month of diesel fuel and 219,976 gallons a month of other fuel oil, producing power for eight hours a day in Port-au-Prince. In September of 2009, the World Bank had approved a $5 million grant that was supposed to help the Haitian electricity grid reduce power losses.

David Adams, an editor with PODER magazine (a business publication that covers the Hispanic world) was a guest on the Charlie Rose show a few days ago and had this to say: "In Haiti people are very used to living without electricity. It`s one of the big problems in Haiti, and that`s why they cut down all the trees for the charcoal for cooking fires. But it does mean that when all our electricity is lost, a lot of the wealthier homes, the hospitals, the hotels, those that are still running, they do have good supplies normally of diesel because they run on generators for their power. If you`re lucky on a good day in Haiti there's only three or four hours of electricity from the grid every day. So people have stockpiles of diesel generat[ors]."

Diligent search reveals no information about the current state of Haiti's electricity system, but given the devastating scope of what has occured there one can only assume that little of the grid and its generation capacity remains. A tentative conclusion: Building an efficient, sustainable, reliable and affordable electricity grid ought to be a priority in the reconstruction effort for Haiti.