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our guest today is ben shell co-founder of li maypow a rural electrification social business
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startup in haiti ben thank you so much for joining us today my pleasure what does lemieux power mean in haitian
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creole it means your light so we wanted to give it our business a name that people would understand
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immediately and light is really probably the most important use of electricity in uh in rural areas of haiti can you
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tell me a little bit about the uh rural electrification situation in haiti and how that led to the genesis of your
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project sure so there's there's three of us co-founders starting the business
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myself another american name dan bierenbaum and a haitian american named duquesne fednard
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so duquesne grew up in a rural area of haiti and since went to the united states
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became a u.s citizen and has worked and gone to school there but he has after the earthquake came back to
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haiti and um really wanted to help develop the country and and heal the country and he had a vision for
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energy as access to energy is a really important way for that to happen so haiti has the lowest rate of
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electricity use per capita in the western hemisphere and it's estimated very difficult to get
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good statistics but estimated that less than 10 percent of people in rural areas in haiti
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actually have access to a grid so there's a huge huge need there and this is an this is a need that
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duquesne was was looking for ways to to solve and a couple years ago dan who went to grad school with
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duquesne um started talking to him about some emerging technology that could that could contribute to this
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and i actually knew dan from uh from before so he brought me in and and so we started our business great uh
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what is your business trying to accomplish so our goal is to electrify rural areas
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of haiti using renewable energy and it's simply that we think that this can bring
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a lot of benefits to people starting with light and how that helps you study at night
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for the kids and improve education and also you can generate income additionally additional income because
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you have good light to work at night where kerosene lamps right now are are really
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difficult to read much less to do any other kind of work so that's that's where we start and then
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we hope that as people can use more electricity and we can generate more and provide more per household and per
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business that they can actually use new appliances and equipment to start new businesses or
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expand businesses and sort of looking in the local economy import less from the outside uh other
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parts of haiti and even internationally and and make more locally and even start to
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export things and so generate more wealth that way and then finally i think eventually when
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people can use cooking appliances that use electricity they can really and also and also
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potentially washing machines and things like that they can save a tremendous amount of
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time on household chores and that can i hope really affect the free time that women
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and girls have and really help them uh gain more equal opportunity um in haiti i think that's a really
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laudable set of objectives uh i know that in other parts of the world such as africa
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some of the risks of kerosene lamps etc uh have been dealt with by people trying
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to use solar power uh to to address those needs can you explain your technology and and
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how it differs from say using led lighting and solar energy to solve the same issue
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sure so we're using gasification technology which is not a new technology it's been around
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for 100 years or so um but there's new versions of small-scale gas fires coming out
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which make it economic for us to deploy it in a rural area um and create a business
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around generating and selling electricity so what that what how that works is you take biomass
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and we're using um actually i have right here we're using corn cobs um here's the corn cup from from rural
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haiti and this is basically treated as trash in haiti farmers will take this after they take the kernels off they'll
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they'll basically just throw it away or they'll burn it when they run out of
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charcoal for stoves so using this you put it into our our system which creates charcoal out of it
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and then eventually through combustion and another process called reduction creates
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a gas two types of gases carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas h2 which are both combustible gases
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and you can run through an engine and and burn just like you can run propane or another kind of gas through through
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engines so we're really excited about this because it's a lot cheaper to deploy than solar
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so if you want to have a solar system in a standalone solar system then you need batteries you need
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inverters you need solar panels and the batteries especially are very expensive and and
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difficult to maintain so a solar system is going to cost of a similar size as our gasifier would
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cost two to four times as much so we're really excited about this new technology which will allow us to make a
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business that is sustainable that can grow and serve the huge need that exists in haiti and
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in other countries too so how many people would this technology serve initially and how would
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you plan to scale it so we have one system now which we're planning to pilot
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uh this summer we're supposed to launch that this summer and that system can serve anywhere from
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100 to 200 households um and it really depends on how much energy each household uses but
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we're talking about pretty small amounts of energy between you know 60 and 300 watts per
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household so that system should serve as our pilot but then we can add more systems onto that we can add bigger
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systems and our goal really is to make this pilot successful and prove that people will be willing to
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pay for electricity at a price that allows us to uh to to grow basically to make profit
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and to pay back our investment costs and to grow and to attract investors who are not probably uh hedge funds or
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anybody looking for 20 or 30 percent returns but but social investors who are have patient capital
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who want to make money but who really care about how they do that and really interested in helping the
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millions of people in rural haiti and the billions of people throughout the world that don't
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have access to electricity now so speaking of investors what is your source of funding
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at the moment and how sustainable is it so right now we're funding ourselves through the
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co-founders we're putting in our own time and effort and money and we're also we've also
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won some some business plan competitions which have given us some grant money that's designed to basically get us to
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the point where we can launch the pilot um and so we're we're going to launch
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the pilot and hopefully make that work and then once we have a model that works we can take that to investors
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and and see if they can help us grow but haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world
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how does that affect your aspirations well i mean i think haiti is a really difficult place
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to do business but i think we have a great team especially with duquesne and his and his
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knowledge and connections in the country um so i think we're well positioned as well
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positioned as anybody in that country to get things done and i think we see so much need
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in haiti that that's really where we want to be in places in haiti or places like haiti because
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that's where there's need and difficulty which also correspond to opportunity so we see
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it as a lot of opportunity how important is it to have a local partner um well i mean duquesne is is he's a
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haitian american so i mean he's not he's not 100 local he's not 100 foreign he's a mix between the two but
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but he's the reason why i'm involved in this business is because i met him
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really inspired by his vision and the work that he had already done in haiti and i thought he'd be a great partner
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and so far we've we've done a lot together can you tell us a little bit about what
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have been your toughest challenges so far and what have you done to address those
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challenges sure so um there's been a number of challenges um i think getting things done
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in in rural haiti has been just slower than i would have expected i've i've worked in developing countries
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basically my whole career um but it's it's a little bit it's slower than it has been in other
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countries and more difficult in some senses but that's also on the flip side has
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been really surprising in terms of how open and excited and supportive the government has been for us
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so they are really encouraging us and and supporting us to launch this pilot um the frame the legal framework
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around it is quite flexible so they are interpreting it in a way which um which is really encouraging us so i
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think that's been that's been surprising and and been great um the technology
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itself um we're sourcing from uh from the united states and it's actually taken longer than we
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thought to adapt that technology to the the reality that we see in rural haiti so that's also been
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been a challenge so where would you say you need help the most um i think i think what we're really going to need
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where we're really going to need help is in the future once we've gotten our
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pilot up and running getting the funding and finding the right partners that can
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provide funding for us to grow i think we're very business-minded but we also have a very strong
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commitment to making sure that electrification really helps people and creates new
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opportunities for people and it's not just about electricity but it's also about creating new
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opportunities and economic growth and and social change in rural haiti so i think
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finding the right partner that also has that vision is probably the most important thing for us
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what's been your most inspirational moment so far um i think working with farmers
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in in rural areas especially in the village where we're planning to to do the pilot working with the farmers
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in that community has been incredibly inspirational because they are really really really really
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want electricity to come and they've been really supportive and they are really an inspiration in terms of
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how hard they work and and the vision they have just for their own community so we're just trying to
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form a strong partnership with them and uh and together i think we can we can do we can do a lot of great
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things and one final question where do you what do you see happening in the next six
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months so um launching the pilot is the biggest uh the biggest thing in the next six
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months so after six months we should have launched that pilot and be working out the kinks in terms of
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the operational model and starting to hopefully raise money to expand ben thanks thanks a lot and all the best
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to you and limia pow thank you very much michael i appreciate the time you