After Earthquake AIDG provides rapid investment for Haitian-owned solar start-up ENERSA
by Catherine LaineMarch 10th, 2010
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.”
Enersa’s IDB Presentation, Oct 2009
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.
Solar Install in Remote Village
Related Information:
Bringing Light to Haiti - ENERSA
Solar Power Brings Light to Quake-Darkened Haiti [NatGeo]
Richard Comp’s 2007 trip to work with Enersa, et al.
Enersa’s profile on Building Markets Haiti
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March 18th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Just returned from ORE compound in Camp Perrin (120 miles SW of PAP). While their main mission is promoting sustainable, environmentally sound agriculture (for 25 years) they are now immersed in aiding some of the 7,000 evacuees to this rural area. While there, I noticed a computer school that they ran for some time but had to close due to expensive and intermittent power. We are also working on a cluster of homes with farmettes, for people displaced from PAP. These would benifit from solar power. Please visit OREworld.org or OREworld.info/ (the earthquake blog). It would seem that collaboration might be in order.
April 5th, 2010 at 9:53 am
We told part of Enersa’s story to some folks at MIT and they were very interested in how OpenCourseware proved useful in helping them start their business. Here is more info from JR (paraphrased from a conversation he had with Steve Lee):
“When I first started working with LEDs in early 2002, white LED technology was still very new. When I read about them, I immediately thought of the value they could provide to Haiti. I purchased some on the internet, but blew a few of them up, since my background is in mechanical engineering, and I was not very familiar with electronics. I first started with some basic electric circuits, then learned via the internet that having an integrated circuit would be much more efficient. But I wanted an explanation about how it worked. I didn’t want to just copy the circuit without understanding it.
I was able to learn this through MIT’s Open Courseware by ‘taking’ one of their basic classes in the electrical engineering department. It was much better than any other information I found on the internet, since other sites were written by electronics experts who assumed that the information would be read by other experts. MIT’s Open Courseware was meant for students so it explained everything step by step.
Using the platform saved us a lot of time and money. If it didn’t exist, we would have had to buy textbooks or enroll in school or hire an expert. None of this would have been possible since we were starting a company and money was precious.”