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How EarthSpark International's Work in Puerto Rico Is Enhancing a Model for Energy Access Everywhere
Adam Eberwein, Technical Lead, EarthSpark International
At the conclusion of 2023, the EarthSpark team took a significant step in delivering on the goal of building resilient, local energy systems and businesses that empower communities around the world by growing ties in the Puerto Rico energy justice community. EarthSpark arrived through an invitation not simply to deliver systems and share experience, but also to listen, build trust, and find its place within a complex, already-active ecosystem of community energy organizations. Nearly three years later, the EarthSpark team’s efforts in Puerto Rico have yielded a network of deep collaborations, hard-won technical insight, and a body of work quietly shaping how EarthSpark approaches electricity systems in Puerto Rico, Haiti, South Sudan, and beyond. Below, we share that journey: the relationships formed, the projects designed, the setbacks absorbed, and the lessons that travel across geographies.
Arriving in Puerto Rico: A Crowded and Purposeful Space
Puerto Rico's climate and energy ecosystem is inspiring. In addition to the many academic, industry, and commercial actors, a wealth of non-profit organizations are also doing challenging and meaningful work. The “Nonprofit Ecosystem” overview below, developed by Let’s Share the Sun and the Puerto Rico NYC Climate Week Coalition for NYC Climate Week 2026, highlights 35 organizations operating across 31 municipalities, spanning community energy cooperatives, direct service providers, place-based community groups, and policy advocates. And this is only a fraction of the total representation. Into this ecosystem, EarthSpark arrived not with a predetermined project plan, but with introductions: key members of EarthSpark connected with Solar United Neighbors, Abeyno Coop, Asociación De Residentes La Margarita (ARLM), and other community-based organizations, forming partnerships that continue to this day, focusing on the needs of La Margarita and beyond.
What distinguished EarthSpark's entry was its positioning: deep global expertise in microgrid design and community-centered deployment, arriving without benefit of a pre-existing institutional footprint on the island. By pairing its technical capacity with partners like Abeyno Coop, who hold deep community roots in Salinas and La Margarita, the project team established a collaborative model where each party contributed useful, complementary elements.
From Relationships to Projects: Technical Work Grounded in Community Need
Through mid-2024, EarthSpark and project partners translated community energy needs into fundable project frameworks across multiple programs:
- DOE Energy Resilience Fund: Resident surveying in La Margarita and a residential solar+storage deployment plan.
- EPA Community Change Grant: Block microgrid design and deployment plan developed with community partners.
- DOE-ETIPP: “Block” and “feeder-level” microgrid designs developed in partnership with Sandia National
Laboratories.
- DOE-SOLVE IT: Energy efficiency upgrades designed for low-income residents.
Central to this work was EarthSpark's focus on medium-voltage and low-voltage distributed energy resources, applied through a three-tier microgrid framework: behind-the-meter residential systems, block microgrids connecting clusters of homes, and feeder-level microgrids serving entire neighborhoods.
Figure 2: EarthSpark's Three-Tier Microgrid Framework in Puerto Rico — from residential installations to community-scale infrastructure, developed in partnership with communities & national laboratories. Base Image Source: Adobe Stock, “Transmission and Distribution,” Image #1363695341
Navigating Setbacks — and Rebuilding
The late-2024 period brought a sharp reminder of federal policy volatility. The Department of Energy (DOE) halted and stalled correspondence on the Energy Resilience Fund. The EPA blocked access to — and then canceled — the Community Change Grant after it had already been awarded. Other anticipated funding sources fell away in parallel.
EarthSpark's response was instructive: rather than retreating, we leaned into partnerships and philanthropic relationships to maintain momentum. With support from Solar United Neighbors and the Dunn Family Charitable Foundation and alongside other partnering organizations, we installed four pilot residential solar+storage systems in high-need residences in La Margarita — converting a setback into a proof point. These installations also advanced EarthSpark's work on Investment Tax Credit (“ITC”)-based project structures, a financing model with potential applicability well beyond Puerto Rico's borders.
2025 brought a second municipality: Bayamón. Through the EPA's Municipal Investment Fund, EarthSpark led a coalition developing a Public-Private Partnership Plan for municipal solar+storage projects — supporting the municipal government directly and expanding EarthSpark's institutional range. As of mid-2026, engagement continues in Salinas and Bayamón, and an early-stage microgrid study award in a third municipality signals growing credibility across the island.
A Two-Way Bridge: How Puerto Rico Strengthens EarthSpark's Global Work
EarthSpark's flagship programs in Haiti — community minigrids serving thousands of households with no prior grid access — and its follow-up work in South Sudan represent the core of its global mission. What does Puerto Rico, a US territory with, at times, federal resources and an existing grid, have to teach about energy access in these contexts? The answer is quite a lot, and the learnings flow in both directions.
First, Puerto Rico has sharpened EarthSpark's technical tools. Designing microgrids with National Laboratory of the Rockies and Sandia National Laboratories in a jurisdiction with extensive engineering standards, permitting, and interconnection
requirements forces rigor that strengthens EarthSpark's practice globally (see published study and poster).
The three-tier microgrid framework is directly applicable to Haiti and South Sudan, where sequencing energy access from single-customer systems to shared community infrastructure is equally applicable.
Second, Puerto Rico has tested EarthSpark's community engagement methodology in a new cultural and institutional context. Partnerships with Abeyno Coop and ARLM have reinforced the conviction that durable energy access requires durable community structures: a principle foundational to our work in Haiti, now refined through the experience of navigating US federal institutions alongside Spanish-speaking communities with a complex and historically often negative history of engagement with US institutions.
Third, Puerto Rico has exposed EarthSpark to financing instruments unavailable in its international geographies. The ITC-based project structure under development in La Margarita does not translate directly to Haiti or South Sudan, but the intellectual labor of designing financing that reduces grant dependence and aligns incentives between investors, installers, and communities is exactly what EarthSpark is pursuing internationally.
And the flow reverses. EarthSpark's decade-plus of operating minigrids where communities have no fallback gives the organization a distinctive voice in Puerto Rico's policy conversations. When EarthSpark sits in discussions about microgrid regulation in Salinas or Bayamón, it carries lived knowledge of what real resilience gaps look like. That perspective sharpens the conversation — and elevates what Puerto Rico's energy ecosystem is building for everyone. Equally important is the ability to listen quietly and learn, as the energy, creativity and ingenuity behind ideas of other entities often extend far beyond what we have ever considered in other contexts.
Looking Forward
EarthSpark's three years in Puerto Rico have not followed a clean arc. Funding has been canceled; federal partners have gone quiet. But the through-line is instructive: the relationships formed in Q4 2023 with Solar United Neighbors, Abeyno Coop, ARLM and many others remain intact and active. The technical work has overcome the disruptions. Community trust, built through consistent presence and trusted partnership, has proven more durable than any single grant. What EarthSpark is building in Puerto Rico is not just a set of projects. It is a model for how an international organization focused on energy access can participate in a complex local ecosystem, contribute its unique capacities without displacing what is already there, and through authentic partnerships, strengthen both local capacity and EarthSpark's capacity to build better energy systems with communities around the world.
Wanda Ríos Colorado, President of Abeyno Coop, and a Coop member point to the member's newly installed solar+battery system that is providing energy resilience for the member's home in La Margarita, Puerto Rico
“Working with the EarthSpark team has been an extraordinary experience for Abeyno Coop and the La Margarita community. From the beginning, EarthSpark has treated our community not simply as beneficiaries, but as partners in building our own energy future. Their technical expertise, commitment, and respect for community leadership have helped us demonstrate that residents can be more than energy consumers—we can be prosumers, producing and managing our own clean energy while building resilience, creating local economic opportunities, and keeping more of our energy dollars within the community. EarthSpark has believed in our vision and worked alongside us to turn that vision into something real.”
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EarthSpark International is thrilled to announce a strategic partnership with Available Infrastructure, a cybersecure AI and HPC infrastructure company. Under the initiative, Available’s sovereign, secure SanQtum neocloud platform will process, store, and protect the critical data enabling minigrids using EarthSpark's SparkMeter meters.
The partnership is the latest evolution of EarthSpark’s minigrid enhancements. Earlier this year, EarthSpark open-sourced ThunderCloud 2.0, the software intelligence that powers its smart meters and minigrids. As part of the partnership, EarthSpark is now migrating SparkMeter and ThunderCloud data and compute off traditional public cloud infrastructure and onto Available’s sovereign, zero trust, and quantum-resilient SanQtum neocloud as its new primary compute environment.
EarthSpark’s migration to SanQtum will strengthen rural minigrids and benefit customers and other stakeholders in three key ways: 1) superior data privacy for grid operators and their customers, 2) enhanced minigrid service continuity and reliability thanks to SanQtum’s low-latency, cybersecure high-performance compute environment, and 3) data integrity and confidence for grid operators’ reporting for government, investors, and philanthropic supporters.
“We are proud and honored to partner with EarthSpark on this important work. In today’s era, energy and other modern infrastructure is synonymous with connectivity, data storage and compute for operations and AI inference, and cyber concerns,” added Dan Gregory, CEO of Available. “Our company was originally founded with an early focus on the energy sector, including minigrids, virtual power plants, and battery energy storage systems. This collaboration with EarthSpark is both a return to our energy-sector roots and a further building of that legacy to bring SanQtum to communities that depend on reliable, clean energy minigrids for their energy access.”
Read the full press release here.
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After developing and operating metering technology for its own minigrids in Haiti, EarthSpark spun out SparkMeter, Inc. in 2013 to serve the broader sector. EarthSpark's team and the SparkMeter founding team felt that a private company would be best placed to raise the capital required, deliver innovation, and ensure long-term sustainable operations of a smart metering enterprise to serve and enable a growing microgrid/minigrid sector.
For over a decade, that theory proved true. SparkMeter grew to be the leading minigrid metering company in the world, serving minigrid operators in 30 countries.
In 2025, that dynamic reversed. SparkMeter's efforts to raise additional capital faced headwinds, and the company ultimately was unable to sustain operations.
With 144 thousand meters reporting and an additional 55 thousand meters sold to customers and awaiting installation, SparkMeter hardware and software were essential for delivering electricity to about 1 million people around the world.
SparkMeter management was able to secure a sale of the company's US operations to Honeywell.
When efforts to secure a commercial buyer for the emerging markets operations failed, and with the prospect of service collapsing for minigrid operators around the world, EarthSpark stepped in. By acquired the emerging market operational assets, EarthSpark is working to
- Ensure that the “lights stay on” for the 1 million people that are accessing electricity through a SparkMeter meter including EarthSpark's minigrid customers in Haiti and
- Ensure open collaboration and co-creation of a sustainable smart metering solution and business model with sector stakeholders.
Image: A map of SparkMeter’s reporting meters in June 2025. Of the 144,334 active meters, 125,758 (87%) are in Africa.
EarthSpark has hired key SparkMeter staff, and over the coming months, the combined team will be working closely with customers, funders, and other stakeholders to shape the future of the SparkMeter smart metering platform and to ensure that the critical infrastructure of smart metering continues to enable the delivery of high-quality energy services around the world.
To learn more about products and services now offered by EarthSpark's metering subsidiary, EarthSpark Meter Ops, please visit www.sparkmeter.io.
A prototype pre-SparkMeter meter in Les Anglais, Haiti, circa 2012.
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Just look at this great thumbs up from Omelia, grid ambassador in Tiburon, this week. She's on site at the solar generation land to welcome engineers and builders from Green Energy Solutions and GENINOV, two companies working together with EarthSpark to repair and expand the microgrid solar generation system in Tiburon, Haiti this month.
Not all the news is good. Security in much of Haiti continues to deteriorate. EarthSpark lost a critical $250,000 in USAID funding which we are currently scrambling to somehow replace. Some of our exciting but nascent work in Puerto Rico has seen the termination of an EPA Community Change Grant to our local partner which was to support, among other things, the development of a much needed solar+battery microgrid in a vulnerable community in Puerto Rico.
But look at these "ground screws" that are going to support new solar panels in Tiburon! They're taller than Jean, our director of microgrid operations! These screws will be used to anchor the expanded solar array to the ground in Tiburon as we relaunch service there -- a full recovery with a bigger and better grid after the container fire disrupted service nearly a year and a half ago.
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Recently in Haiti, six mayors from across the country’s southern peninsula signed contracts to bring electricity to their towns. Combined, the six new grids will bring reliable electricity to over 28,000 people.
The moment was years in the making and represents a pivotal step forward for an ambitious government initiative to energize Haiti’s rural communities with 24/7, solar-powered electricity service. It also serves as a powerful illustration of the herculean perseverance of dozens of Haitian civil servants working tirelessly through extremely challenging circumstances to push progress forward.
Globally, the clean energy revolution will be realized with exactly this kind of grit and pragmatic optimism. Policy, processes and permitting take time and an enormous amount of effort to get done. The glory of flipping of a switch follows the grind of the deals and the documents.
Multi-year processes yield “buckets of documents”
Let me paint a picture for you.
In Haiti, the official meeting log between the Ministry of Public Works’ Energy Cell team and the EarthSpark team documents forty-five meetings, each over an hour long, spanning more than two years. The official meeting records do not capture the countless iterations of spreadsheets and contracts that passed back and forth during negotiations, parallel deliberations with the energy regulator, coordination with the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Finance, the Haitian public procurement office, or the extensive liaising with multi-lateral financial institutions like the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, which are both financial supporters of the government’s microgrid program.
The result? Six grid contracts, each totaling over 250 pages, each printed in 8 hard copies: nearly 16,000 physical pages of contract documentation. During the signing ceremony, each mayor was called to sign and initial his pile of contract documents. For Earthspark, Jean Thaylord, our director of microgrid operations in Haiti, was required to sign or initial every single page . Of all 8 hard copies. Of all six contracts.
Our EarthSpark team – now disbursed across the world – kept checking in on him.
“Jean, ARE YOU OK? How is your hand holding up?!!” We were all gleeful and grateful that this moment had finally arrived.
Jean made light of the effort, laughing that it was a sacrifice he was happy to make given all everyone had done to get to this point.
The minister added his signature a month later. It’s official.
Getting to this point—in the midst of government upheaval, violent gang activity, and sustained community hardship—was a mind-bendingly long and staggeringly complex process involving every layer of institutional hurdle. And we did it!
As much effort as the EarthSpark team put into this, the heroes here are the Haitian public servants who got this done. Diverse teams across agencies persevered, daily, through extremely difficult circumstances – sometimes risking personal security just by going to work – to navigate complex rules and processes to build a new rural energy program from scratch. The amount of time and effort to get these first six grid contracts signed is both outrageous and inspiring. In the face of enormous challenges, people kept pushing and did the work.
The EarthSpark team is extremely proud and honored to now have a formal public-private-partnership with these 6 municipalities and the Ministry of Public Works in Haiti to build these next new grids.
“We’ve now earned the privilege of implementation challenges” is what I keep repeating to my team. Building the grids will not be without challenges. But now we are at the starting line and able to run with the plans we have been building for years.
People across many international institutions also made this moment possible. “The Haitian government, through the [Ministry of Public Works] Energy Unit and [energy regulator] ANARSE, would like to thank the donors, the World Bank and IDB, for financing the mini-grids, as well as [EarthSpark's Haitian subsidiary] Enèji Pèp La, the company in charge of implementing and operating these infrastructures in 6 regions of the country: Marfranc, Beaumont, Dame-Marie, Anse d'Hainault, Chambellan in the Grande-Anse Department and La Cahouane, a locality in the Tiburon commune in the Sud Department. There's no doubt that the development of these 6 mini-grids will help to boost sustainable development indicators in the target regions,” shared Mr. Léonidas Davoust, Coordinator of the Ministry of Public Works’ Energy Cell, who has been a lynchpin of institutional coordination for this effort.
“Blended Finance” for Long-term Sustainable Infrastructure
One exciting element of these next six grids is that they will be the first built under EarthSpark’s Haiti microgrid scale-up plan that uses project finance and blended finance – a term that means pooling together different types of grants, loans, impact investment, and user fees – to build long-term, community-based, clean energy infrastructure with sustainable operations.
If you have ever contributed to EarthSpark, you are an important part of making this all possible! I look forward to keeping you apprised on the efficacy of this model and how it increases the impact of individual giving – which seeds the whole process like a grain of sand in a pearl.
Planning for a Fire Recovery + Reboot
Not all the news has been good. One year and one week ago, a fire interrupted operations of EarthSpark’s second-ever solar grid in Haiti, launched in the town of Tiburon in 2019. Since the fire, we have been working on raising funds for the recovery and relaunch. Thank you SO much to those who have contributed to this effort. We’re happy to share that we have tentatively secured funding for the full rebuild and relaunch. We are working hard to finalize the support, and our goal is to relaunch Tiburon before we launch service in any of the new towns.
Alongside the great achievement of contracting and closing the financing for the next six grids, the new blended finance model I describe above is also expected to help us to improve the speed of repair for future grids.
Our team has been outspoken about the need for robust planning and resources dedicated to operations and maintenance of microgrids, but for our first two grids in Haiti, we did not have sufficient resources to build in redundancy or reserve funds. For these next grids we do.
Catalysts for Transformation in Rural Haiti
Let me close with how I opened: in awe of the many hands and unyielding determination that have enabled the first page (or the first ~16,000 pages!) of a new electricity future to emerge in Haiti.
The entire EarthSpark community of readers and supporters—alongside countless individuals from Port-au-Prince to rural Haiti to Helsinki to the Green Climate Fund in South Korea—together, we have achieved something many doubted could be done.
For these six new grids, so far, we just have documents and funding pledges. But soon – working with Haitian engineering and construction firms who will bring the heavy equipment and build the new systems – we will have solar panels, and poles and wires, and electricity.
And we are just getting started. Behind these first six communities, another 17 towns have proposed EarthSpark grids that have been provisionally approved through this same program. Now that the processes have been built and the template documents have been ratified, we are highly hopeful that the acceleration will be swift.
When asked about the significance of this milestone, Dr. Evenson Calixte, Director of the Haitian Energy Regulatory Agency (ANARSE), who has been deeply involved since the program inception, reflected, “Clean energy is essential for Haiti's development, and these six new concessions* are a testament to ANARSE's unwavering commitment to sustainable progress. Mini-grids are more than infrastructure - they are catalysts that will drive social and economic transformation across rural Haiti.”
I’m boundlessly grateful to everyone reading this who has helped to power this effort.
Thank you for being part of this community and part of this movement.
Please share this story with one person you know today as a kind reminder that progress is possible even in the face of great challenges.
*In this context, “concession” means a government contract with a private entity to perform a specific activity for the public good. It’s a common term in utility governance, but I’m clarifying here since when I say “concession” in normal conversation most folks think I’m referring to some sort of a capitulation or a popcorn stand. :)
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About two years ago, not long after the Haitian president’s assassination, Jean stopped saying that.
No one knows what’s going to happen next in Haiti, and there’s good reason to believe it might get worse.
In parallel with the cascading crises, many people are working very hard to make things better.
From the pinhole vantage point of Haiti that is EarthSpark, I see the dedication of colleagues, counterparts, and community members. A community member is working to donate land for a future microgrid solar array. A government engineer is out assessing sites for civil works. Teams of familiar voices report regularly to video calls from their homes in Port-au-Prince.
It’s jarring to absorb the constant political and security updates, ever-contingency planning while also working to stay the course for the long-planned microgrid expansion. As we scan increasingly grim news, we also celebrate small advances.
The solar-powered Les Anglais community microgrid continues to power on. The microgrid-connected solar+battery system we installed years ago in Tiburon to provide ‘redundant resiliency’ to the health clinic and the telecommunication tower is doing its job.
Conditions have not been easy in the rural areas where we work, but we are relatively very fortunate.
In October, right before the fire in the Tibuorn generation system, kidnappings and terror had arrived in the region where EarthSpark’s grids operate. Indeed, the first images of the plumes of smoke I saw from that fire sent me into a panic that it was a trap set to draw our colleagues to the scene to be kidnapped. (I have to laugh with tears as I type, “Fortunately it was just a normal awful fire – yay!”) A successful police raid of the incumbent gang in the Tiburon mountains has restored relative security in the area, and everyone is extremely grateful for the relative calm if leery of more violence re-erupting.
We achingly wish we could do more right now, but we remain committed to working alongside communities and partners to deliver reliable electricity and build opportunity in spite of the challenges. We are hoping and planning for better days. Whatever comes next, local, reliable energy systems will remain a helpful input to the peaceful prosperity we all hope to see soon.
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“As Haiti’s capital city of Port-au-Prince continues to see alarming insecurity and food shortages, I am extremely proud that EarthSpark’s small team is delivering reliable electricity service to thousands of people in rural Haiti. I cannot say this for sure because there is no data available for other grids, but Ibelieve our grids are delivering what is likely the most reliable grid electricity in the entire country. The “big grid”, where it exists in Haiti, is very frequently out of service for days on end, and in some cases it has not functioned for years.”
Because the EarthSpark grids are powered by solar energy, they had been insulated from the fuel shortages that had plagued the country. Our local team was managing everything locally, and – though not perfect – our service quality was very high.
Then, unfortunately, a fire erupted in one of the containers at the generation site of the Tiburon grid, destroying the power electronics inside. Without these power electronics – the guts and brains of the system –no power could flow from the (undamaged) solar panels and batteries to the community.With only two grids in total, the Tiburon fire reduced by half EarthSpark’s shining counterexample of reliable electricity service in Haiti.
Fortunately, no one was injured in the fire, but unfortunately solar energy has not flowed to the community since. If you can, please consider supporting our campaign to repair the Tiburon grid by donating here.
One point of light in the disaster is the continued functioning of the "distributed energy resource" ("DER") that EarthSpark installed on-site near the Tiburon health clinic in 2022 to offer and additional layer of resilience for the critical community services of the health center and the telecommunications tower. The microgrid-connected onsite solar + battery storage system was designed to offer a redundant layer of energy service so it could function autonomously in the event of a broader grid outage. The small silver lining of the Tiburon fire, if there is one, is that the theory of integrating DERs for critical services is proven out in practice. While the full grid service has been crippled, the DER is still providing clean, reliable electricity to the healthcare clinic and telecommunication tower.
On December 24, the local EarthSpark and Enèji Pwòp teams were able to re-establish limited service in Tiburon by repurposing some spare parts and directly connecting a diesel-fueled generator. It will take months and funding to fully re-establish service. With national fuel shortages always a looming threat, Tiburon’s reliance on diesel is now very precarious in addition to being expensive and extremely difficult to manage from a logistics standpoint.
Overall, 2023 delivered alarming news on the accelerating effects of climate change and the deteriorating security situation in Haiti. Against this background, EarthSpark is shouldering forward in the slow, bureaucratic processes of infrastructure development – plans, permits and financing to build dozens more resilient clean energy microgrids in Haiti – and also managing the day-to-day local operations and now repair efforts of the existing grids. This work has become even more difficult as the rising insecurity in Haiti has led many of our diligent and hard working counter-parties in the Haitian government to leave their positions, sometimes leaving the country. For those who are filling their roles, there is a steep learning curve and a very difficult working environment in which it is frequently not possible to safely move around the capital city. No matter how difficult the challenges, the EarthSpark and Enèji Pwòp teams remain committed to working towards expanded energy access for rural Haiti. Indeed the current scarcity of fuel and insecurity of travel underscore the importance of local, renewable-powered energy systems for community resilience.
Alongside our efforts in Haiti, we are also now working with solar pioneers and community leaders in South Sudan and Puerto Rico to port EarthSpark’s lessons learned in community microgrids in Haiti to other under-served areas. As we stay focused on expanding service in Haiti, we’re thrilled to be supporting leaders in these other places to accelerate their own just energy transitions.
As we look forward, we are taking a deep breath, appreciating all of the communities - local and international - with whom we share the work of powering forward on building clean, fair, locally-powered energy systems.
Thank you for being part of this community!
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EarthSpark supported SunGate Solar, a leading solar installer in South Sudan, to launch the country's first solar-powered community microgrid.
For two years, EarthSpark has been working hand-in-hand with SunGate Solar, the longest running solar installation company in South Sudan, to plan and launch the country’s first solar-powered community-level microgrid.
Like Haiti, South Sudan is one of the least electrified countries in the world with only ~7% of people having access to electricity. That leaves over 10.4 million people living without electric power. The absence of electricity critically limits South Sudan’s potential economic development while also limiting the resiliency of communities, households, and businesses.
Now, with over nine months of successful operation, the SunGate grid is delivering reliable, affordable, 24/7 electricity to 131 connections (over 500 people.) Ninety-eight percent of the customers are reporting no change or a decrease in energy expenses compared to previous kerosene and diesel expenses, and 61% of business customers are reporting improvements in their business operations. The majority of customers are small businesses and institutions including pharmacies, health clinics, computer/printing centers, retail stores, and restaurants.
This life-changing electricity grid has reduced energy costs previously paid for unreliable diesel generators and increased opportunities for local enterprises. The lives of the entire community of Wanyjok (~20,000 people) have also been improved from the microgrid power, particularly through the streetlighting for the downtown market area. Healthcare has improved due to access to reliable electricity, local entertainment businesses are staying open later into the night and opening earlier in the day, and people are feeling more secure with a well-lit marketplace. All of this helps to bolster community resilience and socio-economic development.
Before the mini-grid, diesel power was very expensive and it wasn’t reliable at all. What was worse is that the power surges would constantly damage our computers and equipment - we would sometimes lose 1-2 machines a month. Now, the mini-grid provides cheaper, more reliable power and I don’t have to worry about damage to my computers - I can just focus on teaching my students!"
- Daniel Koch, Owner, Sahara Computer Center
My first encounter with the electric pressure cooker was a bit worrying because I had never used one before. However, it is very easy to learn and use. I am now even training other SunGate staff. The best thing about the electric pressure cooker is that it does not take much time at all. Food gets ready fast and is always cooked well. Insha Allah, if I open my own restaurant, I will purchase an electric pressure cooker. I would also want to get one for my children in Kampala. I cannot wait to stop using charcoal in my home.
- Asha Jabber, Office Kitchen Cook, SunGate Solar
Nearly all cooking in South Sudan is currently fueled by basic biomass.
A South Sudanese woman trials an electric pressure cooker.
EarthSpark has been supporting SunGate to develop solar microgrids and electric cooking in South Sudan since 2021 when EarthSpark helped SunGate develop their initial grant proposal for the Humanitarian Grand Challenges. Leveraging lessons learned from our microgrid work in Haiti, EarthSpark has supported SunGate over the last two years to develop a solar microgrid business in South Sudan by providing a variety of advisory services supporting technical microgrid design and operations, capacity building, data reporting and analysis, communications (e.g. reports and website), research, and fundraising/investment. EarthSpark staff were also on-the-ground in South Sudan for 7 months supporting the actual building and commissioning of the solar microgrid.
Reflecting on his seven months in South Sudan and the nearly two years of ongoing partnership, summarized the collaboration with SunGate, Adam Eberwein, Technical Lead at EarthSpark, summarized, “Our EarthSpark team has spent nearly a decade, day in and day out, living and working in the towns where we deliver microgrid services in rural Haiti, making improvements at every step along the way. In spite of all the differences between these two regions, it was a privilege to see how our lessons learned on one side of the world applied so well to the other. Of course, what ultimately drove the success of the project were the existing strengths of the SunGate team in specialties such as engineering, procurement, and customer support in the South Sudanese context, as well as a company culture of being willing and ready to take on every challenge that comes their way. It is because of this experience that I very much look forward to new engagements with other teams also looking to extend energy access to those most in need.”
Our EarthSpark team has spent nearly a decade, day in and day out, living and working in the towns where we deliver microgrid services in rural Haiti, making improvements at every step along the way. In spite of all the differences between these two regions, it was a privilege to see how our lessons learned on one side of the world applied so well to the other."
- Adam Eberwein, Technical Lead, EarthSpark International
Read more about EarthSpark's newly launched Advisory Services offerings here - already the EarthSpark team is discussing inaugural microgrids in other new and exciting geographies. We can't wait to share more stories as that work progresses!
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You may have heard news about the overlapping crises in Haiti: the acute political crisis, hunger crisis, cholera crisis, gang crisis. Exacerbating everything was a national fuel crisis that stopped the flow of nearly all liquid fuels in the country for many weeks. Fuel is still not flowing in the South where EarthSpark operates.
It's hard to convey how challenging, frustrating and sad the working environment has been these last few months. The bright side is that the EarthSpark and Enèji Pwòp teams are amazing and are doing a phenomenal job of keeping things running in spite of the challenges. We have the privilege of seeing others in Haiti also adapting, coping, and carrying on. With roads blocked and communications systems on-and-off, the accomplishment of even a basic task can feel like a minor miracle. But miracles abound. Good work is still getting done. A local repairman fixed the air conditioner in the solar system battery container! Spare parts have gotten delivered through a phenomenal relay from Germany through Port-au-Prince to remote Tiburon.
As we head into the holidays, we are grateful for our team, our community partners, and our friends around the world who support our work and, though words and actions, help make the world a better place every day.
Please consider including EarthSpark in your year end giving. We have big plans and mighty mountains to climb.
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The 16.2 kWp / 77 kWh solar + storage system builds off of EarthSpark’s initial support for the clinic following the August 2021 earthquake, and was designed to provide reliable power to the downtown clinic and neighboring telecommunications tower. Different from a typical microgrid connection, this novel “distributed energy resource” (DER) on-site at a facility providing critical community services is designed to continue functioning *even if the larger microgrid were to be damaged*. Existing in the context of hurricanes and earthquakes, the EarthSpark grids have done very well overall in the face of natural disasters, but hardening the infrastructure even further for critical facilities is a strategic way to further improve the resiliency of those critical services and eliminate their reliance on their incredibly burdensome, unreliable, and expensive diesel generators.
The commissioning of the new solar installation marked the culmination of EarthSpark’s long-running collaboration with the GSMA Mobile for Humanitarian Innovation Fund through which EarthSpark has been working to improve the capacity of communities hosting solar microgrids to absorb and adapt to disasters. Back in 2019 when the project launched, we had not yet faced COVID-19, the presidential assassination, the rise of kidnappings and impassibility of the roads connecting the South to the capital, the fuel crises, or the earthquake that rocked the region. Time delivered plenty of opportunities for EarthSpark to stress and validate our hypothesis, and to adapt accordingly.
Flipping the switch at the solar+storage solution in Tiburon marked EarthSpark's first directly service to a healthcare customer. It was also EarthSpark's first installation of a DER in one of our microgrids. This is now our foundation for designing and expanding service to other critical healthcare facilities in other grids.
After EarthSpark had begun work in Tiburon, the hospital in Les Anglais also requested service. So far, that hospital has been connected to microgrid service, with the goal of eventually installing distributed solar+storage solution there as well.
The Tiburon health facility DER also significant in validating a more distributed grid topography for future grids – this has the potential to reduce costs and increase resilience for future grids. This approach will need to be replicated and scaled extensively across other planned microgrids to help support EarthSpark’s vision of 100% renewable microgrids.
At the outset of the GSMA Foundation collaboration, EarthSpark was also able to connect a total of three telecommunications towers from the national providers, Digicel and Natcom, across the Les Anglais and Tiburon microgrids. This not only improved the reliability of electricity service for the towers – and therefore the reliability of the telecommunications services – but also improved the financial viability of the microgrid model by creating key anchor customers for the microgrids.
In fact, since the start of 2021, the two telecommunications towers in Les Anglais have accounted for approximately 18% of total electricity consumption and about 28% of total electricity revenue for the microgrid. This highlights the strategic importance of telecommunications towers not just as a critical community service, but also as a cornerstone for planning and expanding microgrids in Haiti.
Mobile-Enabled Solutions and New Energy Access for Households and Small Businesses
Through the GSMA project, EarthSpark also launched several mobile services to improve service, customer experience, and overall microgrid operations including:
- Mobile Money through Digicel’s MonCash to enable customers to pay for electricity credits from anywhere via their smartphone
- An Iphone / Android smart-phone app and digital kiosk to allow customers direct visibility into their electricity consumption and transactions data as well as access to important information on the microgrid and their electricity service
- SMS outreach platform that allows for easier messaging and announcements to the microgrid community. EarthSpark has leveraged this platform to conduct a small energy literacy campaign for its existing customers focused on electricity safety, energy efficiency, and the new mobile solutions. As EarthSpark expands as part of its scale up project with the Green Climate Fund, the SMS platform will enable easier entry into and communications with new microgrid communities.
- In addition to the healthcare facilities and telecommunications towers highlighted above, the project is also expanding microgrid connections to 200 new households and small businesses in Les Anglais and Tiburon.
As the EarthSpark team works to finalize concession documents and financing for the next 6 grids, these learnings and tools will be invaluable in not only improving operations in Les Anglais and Tiburon but also in designing better, more cost-effective and more resilient energy systems for the future towns than would have otherwise been possible. A big thanks to the GSMA Foundation Mobile for Humanity for supporting this work!