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Global Energy Alliance for people and planet
Case study 3
Haiti mesh grids Global Energy Alliance's contribution to Haiti mesh grids: Pivotal Unlike traditional mini grids, mesh grids link small solar and battery units house-to-house, cutting costs and avoiding single points of failure. Global Energy Alliance provided concessional funding to move the technology from prototype to demonstration, embedded experts to fast track regulatory approvals and generated evidence that satisfied investor due diligence. With this support, the local developer Alina Enèji expanded from about 1,000 to nearly 5,000 household connections in just 18 months, at roughly onethird the cost of standard mini grids and with 98 percent reliability. This strong track record unlocked follow-on capital from the World Bank and IDB Lab and laid the foundation for scaling mesh grids to 25,000 households while also shaping future national electrification and productive use energy programs.
Global Energy Alliance’s work in Haiti is part of a broader strategy to link lessons from country-level demonstrations to regional and national frameworks. By helping to prove the viability of a novel technology in one of the Global South’s most challenging operating environments, we built credibility as a leader of the Universal Access Coalition across Latin America and the Caribbean. This fed into emerging efforts in Brazil to advance decarbonization and energy utilization for productive purposes. More broadly, Global Energy Alliance’s role in LAC has meant connecting early-stage innovations such as the mesh grid demonstration in Haiti into policy frameworks and coalition platforms that can scale impact across countries. Mesh grids, developed by Okra Solar and implemented in Haiti by the local energy company Alina Enèji, offered a practical, lower-cost pathway to rural electrification and Global Energy Alliance helped prove the model at scale by de-risking early-stage investment. Okra Solar’s mesh grids link small DC generation-and-storage pods house-to-house, avoiding the single point of failure and higher costs typical of AC mini grids. Before Global Energy Alliance’s engagement with Alina Enèji, the company had self-financed a small pilot project in the rural commune of Marchand-Dessalines. With two small Off-Grid Electrification Fund (OGEF) tranches it reached roughly 1,000 connections by April 2023. Global Energy Alliance then paired concessional finance with hands-on support enabling Alina Enèji to expand to nearly 5,000 live connections in 18 months and to generate the operational record that larger funders had requested for further investment.