Spurring community development with mesh grids
Alina Enèjii is using solar-powered mesh grids to reach remote areas and bring transformational change to communities usually left behind. Learn more through this video.
Watch here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdHiXH2Y7Xg
Driko Ducasse’s childhood was split between life on the vibrant streets of Miami’s Little Haiti and summers in his birthplace, Haiti, visiting his mom. These trips grounded him in his roots – the sound of Creole, the scent of tropical rain, the taste of traditional foods like legumes militon.
When he was in his early teens, Haiti grew to seem more distant, and even dangerous. School and friends in Miami took center stage, the summer visits dropped off, and a decade passed. Then in 2015, as his birth country was in the throes of political turmoil and grappling with a cholera outbreak and widespread poverty, Ducasse’s mother passed away.
“I needed to return to Haiti for her funeral. She was calling me back,” he said. “But I was afraid.”
When he first arrived, he opted to stay in a hotel rather than with family or friends because it offered “the conveniences I’d grown accustomed to.” Things took a tense turn when his car got a flat tire in a poor neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. Without a jack, he grew uneasy as ten young men approached.
“They just lifted up the car together, changed the tire, and then walked away. They didn’t ask for cash or anything,” he said.
It was a lesson he hadn’t expected, and one he would carry with him—the realization that Haiti was still home for all its challenges, and there was much more to its story than headlines could capture.
During this visit, Ducasse decided to do more to help his country. He zeroed in on energy access, still as unreliable in much of Haiti as it had been during his childhood.
A Bag of Rice Concept Applied to Electricity
But to provide energy access to a population where many survive on two dollars a day, Ducasse knew he needed to adopt what he calls the bag of rice concept.
“No one in Haiti buys a whole bag of rice. They buy a cup instead, and purchase enough food for the next three days, because that’s what their budget allows,” he said. “So we needed a pay-as-you-go approach for electricity.”
Ducasse continued to study Haiti’s economics and energy needs as he worked towards his MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. There, he developed the model for his company Alina Enèji. And to bring the equivalent of a cup of rice, he partnered with Okra Solar, the Australian technology developer of solar-powered mesh grids.
The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), established by The Rockefeller Foundation and its partners, supports the scale-up of this work in Haiti through catalytic capital provided via the Off-Grid Electricity Fund.
“At GEAPP, we believe that universal access to renewable energy is not just a climate-related goal, but a vital pathway to empowerment and opportunity for communities in Haiti,” said Isabel Beltran, GEAPP Managing Director, Latin America & Caribbean. “By leveraging catalytic finance to scale innovative solutions like solar mesh grids, our Alliance is ensuring that energy access is the cornerstone of a truly just energy transition, where every individual has the chance to thrive in a sustainable future.”
Mesh Grids Power Up Remote Haiti
Here’s how it works:
Some households are equipped with their own solar panels and a smart Okra Pod device which manages power generation, storage, and distribution. Okra calls these hubs. Neighboring households, called spokes, are interconnected to share power from the same system and maximize the use of solar equipment.
The “hub” and “spoke” households interconnect to form a mesh grid network. Households share electricity, allowing for the productive use of energy for every house in the network.
Okra Pods monitor energy production and consumption in real-time along with remote billing and metering. The system automatically balances supply and demand across the grid, ensuring that everyone in the community gets the electricity they need.
Mesh grids can be a game-changer for remote and underserved communities.
They require far less infrastructure and are 40 percent cheaper than mini-grids, largely because of the low distribution cost of cables. As they are deployed on a household level, no extra land is needed, significantly reducing project development costs, said Indranil Roy, Okra Solar’s Country Manager for Haiti.
They can be sent by truck to remote areas with little road infrastructure or security, deployed quickly–often by community members themselves–and serve neighborhoods where houses are clustered no more than 200 feet (70 meters) apart.
As of April 2024, the World Bank estimated that 29.2 percent of Haiti’s population live on $2.15 per day, and 59 percent lived on $3.65 per day. The annual inflation rate in 2023 stood at 44.2 percent. The advance of energy can also help address these challenges; for 27 percent of Alina Enèji users, electricity has enabled new or expanded economic ventures, which drive revenue increases.
Alina Enèji started in 2021 with 35 houses and has powered 3,000 households so far. Their goal: 10,000 home by 2025 and 40,000 by 2027.
Overcoming Barriers to Bring Solar to Haiti
Scaling the work is not without its challenges, key among them that political instability has led to widespread insecurity. Since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, gangs control of much of Port-au-Prince and key parts of the country, affecting everything from daily life to national politics and economics.
“You do have to be brave. It is not for the faint of heart,” acknowledged Ducasse.
Alina Enèji employs several strategies to meet this challenge, and one is to work directly with the communities they are serving. “Ninety-eight percent of our staff are locals,” Ducasse said.
“And we make sure the community wants the mesh grid before we arrive. So the main risk for us is the places we are passing through.”
Community support helps. In one recent case, gang members stole Alina Enjeli solar panels from a delivery truck but later returned them, saying they hadn’t realized what they had taken was the mesh grid equipment.
“The gang members are from these communities, so they know how crucial electricity is in the places they live,” Roy said.
Leveling the Playing Field
The arrival of electricity can be an equalizer in a country where income and wealth disparity is high, said Euromina Thevenin, Okra’s Customer Success Manager in Haiti. The wealthiest 20 percent of the population controls more than 64 percent of the country’s total income, while the poorest 20 percent account for less than 2 percent, according to the World Bank.
“One woman living in a tiny hut next to a larger house told me that now she is the same as her neighbor, because they both have energy access,” Thevenin said. “It directly affected how she saw herself. I’d never thought about it that way before.”
Visiting communities to check on mesh grid installations, Thevenin sees first-hand how much the arrival of electricity means.
“It’s hard to put into words the impact this has,” she said. “People welcome you into their homes. They treat you like family. You sit on their beds. They give you gifts to take home.”
Electricity means people can be more productive, create or expand businesses, and increase their standard of living, Ducasse said. But it also means they have access to simpler pleasures.
“Because they have porch lights, now they can sit outside at night together and have a conversation,” he said. “And that matters. Haiti can be stressful. Relaxing in the evening with neighbors improves their lives.”
