Hot Dark Nights in Haiti

The spiderweb of wires on the left pole illustrates why public electricity in Haiti is so unreliable.  Our neighborhood transformer has literally 25 houses illegally connected without a meter to measure consumption.  Because so much electricity is stolen, the public utility company actually loses money on each kilowatt produced.  Thus, the only structure in Haiti with reliable electricity 24/7 in Haiti is the Presidential Palace.  Those of us who are not presidents get considerably less.

In our neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, we get public electricity from about 10 pm to 5 am on most days.  Since we would be in the dark during the other seventeen hours, we have an inverter system that uses deep-cycle batteries to provide minimal power for the rest of the day.  When the public electricity does not come on at all (as can happen sometimes for several days in a row), we have a backup generator to charge our batteries.  Recently, we spent four weeks without getting normal public electricity because of a malfunctioning transformer in our neighborhood.  Several times during the last four weeks, we measured 94 degrees fahrenheit inside our bedroom at night.  As you can imagine, we had some pretty uncomfortable nights since August is one of the hottest months in Haiti.  After calling the public electricity company daily for four weeks, we give thanks to God that a crew finally came and "fixed" our problem.  We are going to be taking a good hard look at solar panels for our house in the coming weeks.  Lack of electricity and water are two of the most fatiguing challenges to life in Haiti.