Haiti’s Largest Hydropower Plant Shuts Down After Protests

Haiti’s largest hydropower plant, Peligre, has been shut down after people stormed the facility demanding access to electricity.

The war-torn island nation has been struggling to secure its energy supply, prioritizing the capital city, Port-au-Prince, over other parts of the country, which seems to have angered many.

“Such actions, far from helping meet the population's electricity needs, make EDH's challenges even more difficult as the equipment used to operate plants are expensive and hard to repair, maintain or replace,” the state power utility Electricite d’Haiti said of the protests, as quoted by Reuters.

The state company then called on the government to secure the plant, which has a capacity of 54 MW accounting for almost all of Haiti’s 60 MW in hydropower output capacity, second only to hydrocarbons. Of those, there has been a shortage too, after Venezuela stopped supplying oil to Haiti back in 2019 as it reeled from U.S. sanctions and spiraling oil production.

The power plant will need to be repaired, the state power utility said, but this would be a challenge since the capital city of the island nation has been basically cut off from the rest of it as armed gangs took over, displacing more than half a million people, with some five million facing severe hunger, according to Reuters.

The gangs now controlling Haiti’s capital have cut off supply routes for vital goods including food and medicine, and also fuel. Haiti is heavily dependent on imports for all these. As the gangs fight between themselves, basic necessities have become a luxury, including electricity.

Some in the city are using backup generators, solar panels, and batteries, Reuters reported, but for most Haitians, these are beyond their means, which fact eventually led to the storming of the Peligre plant and its consequent damage and shutdown.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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