Electricity sector in Haiti
[4] In addition, Haiti's large share of thermal generation (70%) makes the country especially vulnerable to rising and unstable oil prices.
In 2017, the World Bank invested a total of $35 million to Haiti in order to improve access and expansion of renewable energy.
[7] In 2011, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Granted $15,000 to a group of researchers from Princeton University to design wind turbines to be used around the country.
[12] According to a study by the Worldwatch Institute, Haiti has the ability to produce a sufficient amount of electricity from renewable resources and solar energy has very strong potential.
[14] In 2011, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) gave a $20 million grant to go towards restoring the Peligre Hydroelectric plant.
In order to partially address this deficit, the government has signed contracts with Sogener, Haytrac and Epower which are private power suppliers, for a total of about 135 MW.
[4] In Haiti, only 38.5%[1] of the population have access to electricity “officially”,[4] although the Ministry of Public Works estimate that the coverage could be higher when irregular connections are considered.
[1] Some towns in Haiti, such as Fort-Liberté, the capital of Nord-Est, have an electricity distribution network, but have been effectively abandoned by the national utility EdH for about a decade.
[25] This high percentage results from improper maintenance due to lack of financing; triggering incidents (e.g. fires); theft; obsolescence of information systems, which prevents proper identification of customers, billing and accounting and in turn impacts quality of service and losses.
[23] However, the elimination of the secretary for energy, mines and telecommunications (SEEMT) in 2005 deprived the government of the technical capacity required to address the crisis in the electricity sector.
After the expiration of the existing contract with Alstom, Sogener is currently the only IPP that generates and sells electricity to EdH.
This situation leads to frequent energy rationing in which large businesses and residential users are forced to rely on expensive back-up generators.
In order to try to overcome its financial problems, EDH charges high electricity tariffs (the highest in the Caribbean in the 1980s).
As a result, many people established illegal connections (one in four urban residents as per estimates at the end of the 1980s), a practice that has prevailed ever since.
This government, together with the donor community, prepared the Interim Cooperation Framework (ICF), which set a strategy for increasing political and social stability and promoting economic growth.
[23] The electricity sector currently faces crucial problems: existence of a limited pool of experts, political interference, weakness in the institutional framework, fragmentation of the main actors and lack of strategic coordination and leadership.
The lack of financial resources for maintenance, poor management practices, fraud and corruption and political interference lay at the core of these problems, which reflect into poor and unreliable provision of electricity services to end users, which in turn results in lack of willingness of affected consumers to pay for mediocre or often non-existent services.
[23] After the election of René Préval as President of Haiti, the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Communications (MTPTC) released in 2006 a draft Strategy for the Development of the Electricity Sub-Sector[33] for the period 2006-2011.
According to this strategy, in the medium to long term, EDH should undertake the following actions: (i) renovate the existing generation and distribution installations, (ii) construct medium-sized plants in the North, South and Artibonite regions when the interconnections are ready, (iii) build the national transmission network to connect the networks of the North, the Artibonite, the South, the West and the South, (iv) build a 120 to 260 MW oil-fired or coal-fired plant, and (v) undertake a vast rural and urban electrification program.
However, this average tariff is still lower than the price charged to EdH by the private producers (US$0.210/kWh and US$0.206/kWh for Alstom (before expiration of their contract) and Sogener respectively).
The combination of a culture of non-payment for electricity services, fairly high consumer tariffs, a low base of metered customers, a lack of support from the authorities to combat corruption and fraud, a weak anti-fraud unit in EdH and widespread electricity theft had led to extremely low levels of cost recovery, which in turn has resulted in an inefficient and decrepit electricity network and a high level of financial losses.
After the expiration of the existing contract with Alstom, Sogener is currently the only IPP that generates and sells electricity to EdH.
External assistance from donors is essential for the improvement of the electricity sector in Haïti considering the lack of auto-financing on the part of EdH and insufficient local skills.
[20] The World Bank is providing US$6 million grant for an Electricity Loss Reduction Project (PREPSEL)[38] This is a three-year pro project whose main objectives are: (i) install new commercial and technical service systems for the EdH and (ii) carry out investments in networks and commercialization in one zone of Port-au-Prince and for the large customers of EdH (accounting for 70% of revenues).
The Haiti Economic Governance Reform Operation II (EGRO II),[38] for which the World Bank has committed a US$23 million grant, includes two conditions that are related to the electricity sector: (i) the government should publish a monthly dashboard to monitor financial transfers from the State to the electricity sector and contracts (achieved), (ii) the government and EDH cannot sign new contracts (and amendments) without a competitive bidding process.
In December 2007, the IDB approved a US$750,000 technical cooperation donation for the design of EDH's Mid-Term Investment Plan.
[40] The objective of the Program is to identify the necessary activities at the feasibility level that are required to rehabilitate and efficiently operate the Peligre Hydroelectric Dam.
The agency is currently financing the strengthening of the Jacmel center (US$4 million), which will undergo works for rehabilitation in generation, transmission and distribution.
The success of this project provided Jacmel with 24 hours of electricity a day,[42] an achievement that is currently facing difficulties.
