With solar panels, Tufts organization brings light to rural Haitian village

Securing a donation of solar panels from BP Solar seems like it would be the most difficult part of a student-run sustainable energy project in an impoverished country. But a group of Tufts students still had much more to do before they could bring electricity to a village in northern Haiti.

Supported by the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL), the members of Sustainable Energy Access for Haiti (SEAH) recently completed the installation of an off-grid solar energy system in the rural community of Balan, Haiti. The panels electrify three rooms and illuminate the community space near Lycee Nationale Jacques Roumain, Balan's public school. SEAH has spent the last two years working on all aspects of their experimental energy project, from assessing and refining the design to funding and budgeting. 

According to senior Michael Graifman, one of SEAH's leaders, the school of over 300 students is located in a neighborhood that had no publicly illuminated areas. Graifman's team communicated with a local group of community leaders and identified lighting as an important need in the town.

"[The fluorescent lights] would not only increase the amount of time available per day for commercial activities, but also provide the students at the local school with a space to study their lessons," Richard Novak, a Ph.D. candidate in bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an email to the Daily.

In addition to helping SEAH with the design of the 1.4-kilowatt power system, Novak joined Graifman, two other SEAH members and executive director of the Haitian Coalition of Somerville Franklin Dalembert at the installation site.

There, they learned from the school's principal that students normally study by walking around and reading out loud.

"This was a completely different notion of studying for us," sophomore Naika Pierre, a Creole-speaking member of SEAH, said. "So, we concluded that external lights would be more beneficial for the students to prepare for exams."

Because the classrooms get very hot in the summer months and the school's secretary has to work several miles away to access the nearest computer, the group also installed outlets to power two computers, fans and lights in two classrooms, Novak said.

According to Graifman, these simple electrical improvements will allow the school to increase its capacity by 90 students.

Once the general energy needs were determined, SEAH had to align its technical and financial capabilities with the community's expectations. Junior Andrew McGlathery said that this process happened in a "backwards way."

"Normally, you first make the energy assessment and then acquire all resources," he said. "But we are a student group, so we had to give the community our budget and let them decide how they wanted to distribute it."

With the help of local volunteers, the group spent the next few days preparing for the installation by digging holes for the solar panels and assembling and wiring all of the equipment that they had either shipped from the United States or bought at local hardware stores. According to Graifman, after mounting the solar panels properly, they built a cement wall around them and installed a security light.

Although the latter steps of the installation were considered vital for security reasons, they might prove to be unnecessary because many townspeople were heavily involved in the project. According to McGlathery, this provides a "social deterrent against theft."

"When the community feels ownership of the project and the new energy system, they are more likely to protect that investment," he said.

Training the community in system maintenance has also been a crucial component in the endurance of SEAH's initiative. This comprehensive training included quizzes on various troubleshooting scenarios and continued with weekly updates to the U.S. engineers, according to Graifman.

"These costs are expected to remain inexpensive, and in the future SEAH would like to explore ancillary revenue streams that could be generated using the electricity from the system," Graifman said.