This past February, AIDG gave Haitian solar start-up, ENERSA, a $15,000 emergency loan to help it rebuild its factory damaged in the January 12 earthquake that rocked the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area.
Duration: 2 minutes 14 seconds
Before the quake struck, Enersa was the fastest growing solar company in Haiti, with contracts in all 10 departments and installations in 58 cities and remote villages. The 2 and a half year old company is the brainchild of Haitian born Jean Ronel Noël and Alex Georges who met in graduate school in Montreal while pursuing degrees in mechanical engineering and business administration. In 2000, the two decided they needed to return to Haiti to start a business that could create positive change in their home country.
Enersa’s product line includes solar street lighting, residential and commercial solar systems, and solar chargers for smaller devices like cell phones and lamps. They initially settled on LED streetlights as a flagship product after seeing Japanese company Nichia’s white LEDs in action on Montreal’s streets. The big question for them at the time was what would they use as an energy source if they wanted to port this technology to Haiti. Haiti’s electricity infrastructure was notoriously unreliable in urban zones and nonexistent in rural areas. However, the country’s location in the sun-drenched tropics and the relatively modest energy requirements of LED systems made solar an attractive option for the Enersa team, if a suitable price point could be reached.
In steps Richard Comp of Maine Solar and Skyheat who would come to be Noel and Georges’ mentor. He introduced the team to methods of solar fabrication including inexpensive ways of encapsulating PV cells. Through Skyheat, Comp has trained teams in Mali, Nicaragua, Haiti and Peru in small-scale solar panel manufacturing.
AIDG first learned about Enersa when our Executive Director, Peter Haas met Noel and Georges at the Inter-American Development Bank Haiti Business forum in Port-au-Prince last September.
“I was immediately impressed by [Noel] an engineer who taught himself the electrical engineering he was missing by using the free online engineering resources of MIT Opencourseware from Port Au Prince,” says Haas. “Also, after seeing the dramatic bootstrapping JR and Alex had done in starting their business, it was clear this team was different.”
My interaction with JR last week during a tour of the damaged Enersa facility reinforced that impression. Though the factory had sustained much damage — several collapsed interior and exterior walls, JR was optimistic about the company’s outlook. With the help of our emergency funding and some smart maneuvering, he expected to be back in production in a few short weeks. Enersa was lucky in that all their employees were safely accounted for and little of their inventory was damaged. Their latest shipment of solar cells had been safe in Miami at the time of the disaster.
In our chat, Noël stressed the importance of creating jobs in Haiti. He believes that for Haiti to flourish, enjoy sustained growth and ultimately transition into a developed nation, businesses need to create local employment opportunities. So rather than simply importing completed panels and lights, Enersa imports the basic building blocks and employs local youth for production and installation. In their solar streetlights for example, the small panel, LED lights and towers are all made in Haiti. The company’s 18 fully qualified solar technicians, all capable of installing solar streetlights and photovoltaic home systems, are from Port-au-Prince largest shantytown, Cité Soleil. An added benefit of local production, Noel added, is that their completed panels are also 25% cheaper. Double win.
Enersa’s client focus for the near future will be NGOs and private companies in Haiti who need reliable access to electricity and want to support a socially responsible local business.
To contact Enersa, please email enersahaiti {at] gmail (dot}com.
This project was the brainchild of Luc Castera, a Haitian born entrepreneur who also lives here in Arlington. He saw my videos on YouTube and thought my message would be an encouragement to those affected by the earthquake.
Luc has arranged for the video to be dubbed into Haitian Creole and shown as part of the Cinema Underthe Stars, a mobile outdoor movie theater that brings entertainment and inspiration to rural Haitian communities.
Our amputee video will be shown to tens of thousands of Haitians during 260 showings in 52 communities on Cinema Under the Stars’ current tour.
Bill Easterly author of “White Man’s Burden” and ideological nemesis of Jeffrey Sachs gives the top 10 wrong ways to write about poor people.
My favorites.
6. Discuss only income, health, access to clean water, and literacy. Leave it to anthropologists to cover areas like happiness, traditions, ceremonies, festivals, friendships, kinship, love between men and women, or love between parents and children.
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8. Don’t show pictures of poor men, who make your audience think of drunkards, wife-beaters, or janjaweed.
9. These topics are only for Marxists: power, class, discrimination, oppression, or history.
Along the same lines, check out actor Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond, Constantine, In America, Amistad) reading Binyavanga Wainana’s must-read article How (not) to write about Africa.
Tens of thousands of people from nearly every nation on earth have descended on Copenhagen this month for the UN climate summit. As the delegates try to piece together a framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, they’re also absorbing lessons from one of the world’s leading cities in sustainable transportation. In Copenhagen, fully 37 percent of commute trips are made by bike, and mode share among city residents alone is even higher.
Come see “the busiest bicycling street in the Western world”, and lots of other you-gotta-see-them-to-believe-them features including bike counters (featuring digital readouts), LEDS, double bike lanes (for passing) and giant hot pink cars.
Catapult Design is working with AIDG and the [Appropriate Technology Design Team] to design an affordable wind-powered generator capable of producing enough electricity to charge a cell phone, power a radio, or operate LED lights for nighttime use. The generator is intended for rural, off-the-grid communities without electricity. Catapult Design’s product, a pico vertical-axis wind turbine, is designed to operate in low wind speeds while charging a
12v car battery – this battery will in turn power small electrical devices.
Duration: 20 sec
The setup and control station down at the NASA-Ames Research Facility wind tunnels in Mountain View, home for our wind turbine blade testing.
William Kamkwamba, from Malawi, is a born inventor. When he was 14, he built an electricity-producing windmill from spare parts and scrap, working from rough plans he found in a library book called Using Energy and modifying them to fit his needs. The windmill he built powers four lights and two radios in his family home.
My favorite thing about William’s story and this interview with John Stewart is that it provides a storybook example of how access to information either through your local library or through the internet can be life-changing. William’s current path started because he picked up a book and did what so many autodidacts and tinkerers do. He started to make things. He’s on his way to Dartmouth next year through a series of serendipitous internet events. Blogger Mike McMay (Hacktivate) read about him in a local Malawian newspaper. After reading Mike’s writeup, Emeka Okafor (Timbuktu Chronicles blogger and AIDG advisory board member) “spent several weeks tracking him down at his home in Masitala Village, Wimbe, and invited him to attend TEDGlobal on a fellowship”.
Following Kamkwamba’s moving talk, there was an outpouring of support for him and his promising work. Members of the TED community got together to help him improve his power system (by incorporating solar energy), and further his education through school and mentorships.
After his ‘discovery’, William gets into the African Leadership Academy, a prep school in Johannesburg founded by fellow Echoing Green alums, Chris Bradford and Fred Swaniker. Somehow with all these changes going on, he also manages to write a book, The Boy who Harnessed the Wind with Bryan Mealer.
Yup, all this because of a simple trip to the library. It makes me feel rather nostalgic for Levar Burton and the Reading Rainbow. All that books can transport you stuff.
Because I imagine that the theme song is currently playing in your brain, here are the lyrics just in case that little voice inside your head forgot the words ;).
Reading Rainbow Theme Song
Butterfly in the sky
I can go twice as high
Take a look
It’s in a book
A Reading Rainbow
I can go anywhere
Friends to know
And ways to grow
A Reading Rainbow
I can be anything
Take a look
It’s in a book
A Reading Rainbow
A Reading Rainbow
Pop the name of a book that changed your life in the comments. Mine are the Rand McNally atlas and basic science books that my mom got me as a kid. They kicked off my love of science and learning.
AIDG biodigester intern, Christopher Salam, talks about his work with us in 2009. Chris has been assisting on biogas field visits, building and managing the demo biodigester installations at AIDG’s Guatemala office and testing biodigester effluent enrichment through vermicomposting.
AIDG Micro-Hydroelectric Intern Will Stone talks about his work with us in Guatemala. Will assisted in the upgrade of a Pelton Turbine at the Nueva Alianza community and designed a Mitchell Banki Turbine for use at the Corazon del Bosque ecopark.
After months of competition, over 30 hours of business development training, and endless hours of practicing business pitches on October 24, 2009 six talented teams presented their business plan proposals in the final phase of AIDG’s business plan competition: GuateVerde 2009.
Needless to say, with such strong competitors and outstanding presentations, choosing a winner was not easy but it is with great pleasure that AIDG announces this year’s GuateVerde winner, Quetsol.
Quetsol is a new business that will provide high efficiency, low cost solar technologies that aim to increase access to basic illumination, electricity generation, and water pumping in Guatemala. Their mission is to help their clients save money and improve their quality of life through the use of appropriate technology.
Who are Quetsol?
Quetsol’s Director of Technology and Finance, Manuel Aguilar, holds a Master’s Degree in astrophysics and a Bachelor’s Degree in astrophysics and physics from Harvard University. His work experience includes founding and managing a global-macro hedge fund, working as a quantitative analyst for a private equity group, as well as significant astrophysics research.
Director of Marketing and Sales Juan Rodriguez has a Business Administration degree from the Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala City with an emphasis in finance and marketing. For the past four years, he had worked as a marketing manager for Proctor & Gamble Interamericas and formally owned and managed his own advertising agency.
The third member of the Quetsol team is Matthew King, their Director of Logistics and Operations. Mr. King is a recent graduate of Harvard University with a Bachelor’s degree in the Comparative Study of Religion. His studies have also taken him to Cuba, via the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and Japan. His work experience includes solar photovoltaic and biodigestor installations in Nicaragua, appropriate infrastructure development advocacy in Brazil, and activism against deforestation in California.
Manuel Antonio Aguilar and Juan Fermín Rodríguez
Samples of Quetsol’s proposed product line
AIDG is greatly looking forward to working with this talented team and continuing in our mission to increase access to basic energy through local business support. Congratulations to Quetsol and thank you to all the staff, volunteers, reviewers, judges and supporters who made GuateVerde 2009 a huge success!
GuateVerde 2009 Judges: Ing. Saúl Santos, Dr. Dennis Rodas, Ruth Degolia, Peter Haas, Cat Lainé, Lic. Juan Molina
