The Sigora platform was conceived, developed, and fine-tuned in the remote North West of Haiti, where Sigora Haiti - a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sigora International - launched the country's first private utility. Contact online >>
The Sigora platform was conceived, developed, and fine-tuned in the remote North West of Haiti, where Sigora Haiti - a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sigora International - launched the country's first private utility.
With over 4,000 units deployed across three of its own micro-grids, Sigora benefits from constant feedback, enabling us to create a product optimally suited to frontier market conditions.
Sigora grids have been able to prove economic sustainability and commercial viability, leading to significant commercial investment to scale operations and expand the grid to service even more users.
Learn more about Sigora''s proprietary smart meter and grid management technology.
Interested in our efforts to bring affordable, clean, and reliable power to Haiti? Visit the Sigora Haiti website to learn more.
Sigora Haiti stands to tip the balance in expanding energy access by making micro-grids an investable proposition.
The Sigora green microutility is a unique approach for the environmentally and financially sustainable electrification of underserved communities.
We leverage our unique platform and broad experience in execution to rapidly install and scale interconnected clean energy microgrids – the microutility - in frontier markets.
Deploying specialized hardware, web-managed software, and simple pre-payment solutions specifically designed for frontier markets, Sigora can power anything from a small fishing village to a large city, all with the same technology. Sustainably.
To show you how important electricity is in the life of a country, let me define electricity for you this way: Electricity is life.
Solar and wind generation scaled & deployed for reduced construction and operational expenses.
"Cash Guaranteed" 24/7 electricity that is suitable for refrigeration, electrical cooking, and modern commercial appliances.
Fair pricing that reduces customers'' energy expenditures and generates profits for the microutility.
Advancements in solar and wind technology provide a reliable, clean, and low-cost alternative to fluctuating centralized power generation. Meanwhile, collocated generation on a largescale unlocks greater economies of scale and more efficient management of the power system.
Sigora smart meters are designed to address the needs of a utility provider in an emerging energy market. We took a modular approach to the design, allowing for custom configuration on every level from power type (single phase, split phase and tri-phase) to communication method. In addition, the meters take theft prevention a step further, acting as a decoder for the power that comes into the device.
Sigora''s remote monitoring control provides real time feedback and allows for full manual and automated control of individual meters that provides pre-paid mobile payment with demand control, real time analytics, and anti-theft capabilities.
To get in touch with our public relations team, send us a message.
Photo: EarthSpark International
The OPEC Fund has presented its 2020 Annual Award for Development to EarthSpark International, Haiti, in recognition of its innovative approach to energy access and climate change mitigation. Read about the EarthSpark story below…
In 2008, a group of Haitian immigrants living in the US emailed a US cleantech entrepreneur with a proposal: to build a wind turbine to power streetlights in Les Anglais, the small town they came from on the Caribbean country’s south coast.
Seven years later, through EarthSpark International, the non-profit organization created as a result, Les Anglais had more than streetlights. It had Haiti’s first privately operated microgrid, supplying solar-generated electricity to townsfolk who had previously used kerosene, candles and charcoal to meet their energy needs. A second grid opened in the nearby town of Tiburon last year. This mission to solve energy poverty in rural Haiti – where only 15 percent of households are connected to the official grid – is why EarthSpark has been chosen to receive the OPEC Fund for International Development Annual Award for 2020, with a US$100,000 prize.
Beyond these material signs of progress was a subtle psychological shift, which EarthSpark’s President, Allison Archambault, noticed when the grid was switched off during Hurricane Matthew in 2016. “We were hearing from the community that, even without electricity, the grid arriving had changed their sense of self: ‘We are a community that is a leader, a pioneer, and we know we can do things.’”
EarthSpark is a perfect example of the kind of dynamic local partnership the OPEC Fund seeks out in its mission to help develop partner countries. Since the fund was created in 1976, it has approved loans and donations of more than US$25 billion in sustainable development commitments – to both public entities and private sector partners.
But finding the right partners to achieve development goals in a given country can be challenging. They have to tick specific boxes, as Khalid Khadduri, the OPEC Fund’s Senior Private Sector Investment Manager, explains:
Awarding grants to non-profits and non-governmental organizations is another avenue if the private sector can’t fulfil these requirements for a given territory. Prior to the award, the OPEC Fund had also provided a US$350,000 grant to EarthSpark to develop the second Tiburon grid; with an initial phase producing solar lanterns, and then the microgrid, in Les Anglais, the organization had already demonstrated the ways in which it fulfilled the OPEC Fund’s development brief.
Financial viability was something EarthSpark was “clear-eyed” about from the start, says Archambault. Charging for energy meant challenging Haiti’s culture of non-payment for electricity – with significant amounts of theft from the official grid.
But EarthSpark – enabled by the SparkMeter technology it launched – allows grid users in Les Anglais to prepay, buying electricity credits in small quantities as needed. “It was fundamentally respectful of our customers, instead of surprising them with a bill a month after they consumed the electricity. It just didn’t make sense in those markets,” she says. The upside is that payment efficiency is quite high, theft is low, and many households now connected to the grid are saving up to 80 percent on what they had previously been spending on other means of lighting, phone charging, and other basic energy services.
The Les Anglais microgrid has also energized the local economy, an important part of the OPEC Fund’s mandate to support small- and medium-sized enterprises. No longer relying on diesel-run generators has reduced the cost of everyday business tasks – such as lighting and charging phones – that rely on electricity. And with refrigeration now possible, selling cold drinks has become a popular retail option in the town. Entrepreneurs from carpenters to ice cream confectioners can now plug in to the reliable power.
The concept of “feminist electrification” – EarthSpark’s commitment to this won a UN award in 2018 – is central to the development process. “There’s no secret sauce there,” says Archambault. “It’s just engaging women authentically throughout the entire process of pre-development, development and operations.” She highlights outreach work with Fanm Vayant Zangle, an agricultural cooperative: EarthSpark has helped them source electric-powered labor-saving devices, such as a corn sheller and a mill. Another current project – open to all, but predominantly involving women in Les Anglais – focuses on helping locals transition from charcoal-based to electric cooking.
The OPEC Fund has been working in Haiti since its inception in 1976, and has approved approximately US$100 million for about 50 development operations. Energy – with its galvanizing effect on agriculture, and on water and sanitation – remains key for development there. However, the government’s interest is currently also being drawn towards the agricultural sector, which has withstood the effects of the pandemic better than others; the OPEC Fund is negotiating funding for a large-scale irrigation project in the south of Haiti.
But the country – the poorest in the western hemisphere, where half the population live on less than US$1 a day, and with turbulent governance – remains a challenging environment in which to operate. Its vulnerability to natural disasters such as the devastating 2010 earthquake and 2015 Hurricane Matthew is especially problematic, says Natalia Salazar, the OPEC Fund’s Country Manager for Haiti: “What they cause is delays. Our project implementation average worldwide is seven years, but in Haiti it can take over 10. And in that time, you might have three different governments.”
Even with the government’s interest in the energy sector, and broad support for microgrids, Archambault says the lack of a legal and regulatory framework in Haiti makes it slow-going for initiatives such as EarthSpark’s. There was no electricity regulator when it was developing the Les Anglais grid; the local municipality had to grant the right to build the system. Tiburon’s is the new regulatory body’s first official microgrid concession.
Partly because of such obstacles, the OPEC Fund has yet to fund private sector companies in Haiti. But its work with the public sector is vital for the capacity-building that will eventually allow this to happen – especially in the country’s poorer south. “It shows that there’s a will,” says Salazar. “By supporting rural areas, you can support a whole community, you can lift people out of poverty, and you can provide know-how and solutions to the government.”
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