PHARES Launch Presentation, Virtual Workshop of 17 September 2020

PHARES is the Programme Haïtien d'Accès des communautés Rurales à l'Énergie Solaire, launched by the Haitian government to bring electricity to rural and peri-urban communities through renewable mini-grids built and operated by private companies in areas a regional grid will not reach in the short term. This deck is its launch presentation and the most complete account of the design in one place.

It sets out the institutional arrangement: implementation by MTPTC through its Cellule Énergie with technical assistance from TramaTecnoAmbiental, together with ANARSE as regulator and the Ministry of Economy and Finance's Unité Technique d'Exécution. It names the two financing programs behind it, the Inter-American Development Bank's AMACEH (HA-L1140) and the World Bank's Énergie Renouvelable pour Tous under the SREP trust fund (TF0A5191), and it identifies the supporting parties: TramaTecnoAmbiental advising the ministry, Odyssey as the official web platform through which proposals are submitted, and NREL providing technical support.

The bidding design follows: a two-stage process in which succinct proposals are evaluated first and qualifying bidders are then invited to submit full proposals, all handled through Odyssey at no cost to bidders. The agenda also covers an update to the project's environmental and social management framework and a situation report on Haiti's mini-grids at the time.

Its value now is as the design record against which everything later can be read. The program has moved a long way since: concessions negotiated with EarthSpark for six mini-grids, a contested award at Carice, and further sites under construction through the adjacent ERAF program. What this deck fixes is what the program said it would do, and by what mechanism.