If you haven’t watched Electricite de Zahle’s new ad, I’ve embedded it here:

Now, the below is a post I wrote in February 2016 when I went up to visit EDZ and meet the team behind it. I’ve updated some things, and you can find the original here.

How EDZ Works

How embarrassing is it that in 2017 and many billions of dollars later, we still don’t have electricity 24 hours a day? I guess that’s why Electricite de Zahle (EDZ) and what they’ve managed to pull off in their 250 square kilometer area of operations, was so incredibly exciting and rekindled some hope in issues it seems we’ve all collectively given up on for being almost insurmountable thanks to the world’s worst, most corrupt politicians.

What’s EDZ?

EDZ is a private company founded in the 1920s. It holds a concession to fulfil the electricity needs of the Central Bekaa. Originally, it both produced and distributed electricity, however, in 1969 Electricite du Liban (EDL) requested that EDZ stop increasing its capacity and basically restricted it to just distributing it. The EDL move back then though, wasn’t sinister in nature, in fact, before the war, EDL was producing a surplus of electricity, which is why this request was made and the contract signed back then.

That surplus is no longer the case though, and hasn’t been for a very, very long time. Longer than most of you reading these have been alive…

The 24-Hour Solution Breakdown

Given that the original contract stipulates EDL has to meet electricity needs of the region, EDZ has been trying for years to compensate for the severe shortages of EDL’s power production. It’s estimated that 1500MW are what EDL provides, when the demand is just a little over 3200MW. This translates to anywhere between 12 and 18 hours of no power a day.

The solution was a tricky one, and as Mr Nakad explained his line of thought, I loved how carefully it had been set up to ensure EDZ can fulfil its promise, while not breaking the law or ruffling too many political feathers by the time customers start feeling the change. Then, as expected, it would be too late for the politicians and moteur cartels to reverse the progress made.

EDZ’s concession is scheduled to end in 2018 if there’s no extension, which means the company and all its facilities will be handed to EDL free of charge. That was when I started to become horrified, hearing that all the progress made might have to be handed back to EDL, that certainly would spell doom for any successful project, given EDL’s horrifying 40+ year history of embezzling our taxes for atrocious coverage. So, I sure hope they extend beyond 2018!

But, building a power plant themselves with possibly only few years on the clock left (and not enough time to at least pay off the cost of the plant from the revenues generated from customers), didn’t make economic sense, especially when most of Lebanon’s major banks refused to help with funding that endeavor (excpet Byblos Bank). That’s when EDZ partnered up with Aggreko, a British company that specializes in temporary power supply with a 2-year lease to supply Zahle with the rest of the power it needs.

The power plant features 60 diesel oil generators running at optimal capacity that can easily be altered based on the demand. Each is fitted with filters and noise cancelling structures to make sure pollution is kept to a minimum, and the entire is less noisy than a busy restaurant at lunch. (As a person who lives in the Zouk area, I can always hear the noises from the notorious power plant, sometimes waking me up at night when it’s “clearing the smoke towers” which, despite allegedly being fitted with filters, still spew toxic sludge and smog pushing everyone here closer to a painful death by garbage fires and the Zouk power plant like some post-apocalyptic distopia movie.)

I was also surprised by the stringent safety procedures and protocols in place, something kind of out of place in Lebanon, where safety is often a joke and work is usually done ad-hoc, even in essential facilities like power plants.

So, basically EDZ buys energy from EDL that is fed into the EDZ grid, and the second EDL stops supplying every day, EDZ maintains the power supply constant with its own generators for most of the hours in a day. This means that for a customer, the electricity never cuts, even for those few seconds in between most of us start cussing at because the router is rebooting and ruined that download you’ve been waiting hours to finish. And more importantly, they pay one bill that is 35–40% cheaper overall. That’s because EDZ’s tariff is based on how many hours EDL fails to provide electricity and the price of diesel oil, unlike the “moteurs” local generators that have refused to lower prices even though diesel is down more than 60% from its peak when their tariffs were set.

Moteurs Cartels

Who doesn’t remember the barbaric savages foaming at the mouth while shooting at transformers, EDZ facilities and workers last year because their polluting, overpriced and impractical “services” were being made obsolete by a better, cheaper and less-polluting option. Who can forget how the police sat cross-armed and did nothing about it?

Nakad and his family were constantly harassed and threatened, and you get a feeling of how bad it got by how secured the power plant is. I joked with Jimmy “this looks more like a US military base”, and that was true, especially when it coms to safety and security procedures. That kinda shows you how desperate corrupt people would go to protect their embezzlement of people’s money because of the public sector in Lebanon failing miserably. It also shows how sticking with your plan and not succumbing threats can pay off if you stick to it and help make people’s live better, or at least, less bad.

EDZ is far less extreme in their dislike of the generator owners than I am, and in making sure they don’t force anything upon the people living in their area of operations, they install, free of charge upon request, special switches that allow you to remain with your local moteurs and EDL only, without EDZ’s supply. However, a measly 15 out of 55,000+ households opted for that option (probably those that own the moteurs, hahahaha).

At the end of the day, folks realize paying a cheaper single bill for continuous power supply was awesome and the violence and crimes by the moteur cartels subsided after virtually everyone abandoned them. It seems the cartels didn’t mind that too much though, given how experienced they are in the dirty moteur business (since Zahle area has been experiencing shortages since the 70s) they have expanded to many other areas in Lebanon, and their business of profiting off of people’s suffering for an unfairly high price, sadly continues outside of EDZ’s area of operations.

Plans for Jbeil? Tripoli?

After the resounding success of EDZ, many folks started talking about Jbeil or Tripoli following in the footsteps of EDZ. I asked Mr. Nakad about that, and if he was at all involved. That’s when he explained there are several obstacles to that, first of which is EDL.

In Zahle, the electrical infrastructure was built and is owned by EDZ. Given the concession, they don’t need EDL’s permission to use their own network. They also don’t need to refrain from generating power too, given EDL broke its commitment in the contract to provide 24h power. Unfortunately, most of Lebanon’s electrical infrastructure (poles, lines, transformers, etc.) are owned by EDL, and given its track record and an administration that is as corrupt and un-reformable as Ogero, that happening is very unlikely without actually breaking the law and using the EDL lines and infrastructure to supply electricity generated by companies or individuals like EDZ.

Tripoli does have a company with a concession similar to EDZ, but it also expires soon. So, in terms of most probably able to imitate Zahle’s success story, Lebanon’s second city, Tripoli, is best poised to finally enter the 21st century in Lebanon that includes 24h electricity like virtually ever other inhabited place on the planet (even in a remote Nepalese village in the Himalayas I stayed in where there wasn’t even a paved road…)

All in All

It is extremely encouraging to see such an ambitious project being undertaken and succeed despite all the security and corruption hurdles it faced. It’s rare to see a problem actually fixed in Lebanon, whether it’s a vacant presidential seat or more than 6 months of drowning in garbage in the darkness. EDZ represents hope in changing stuff for the better without waiting for the crippled, illegitimate government to do something about it, which we all know it won’t unless it involves the politicians making a cut, regardless if taxpayers get what they’re being overcharged and overtaxed for.

I really hope the same can be replicated in different parts of Lebanon, both in terms of power supply and other basic necessities (such as waste management perhaps, as I have called for since August 2014)

This also puts to rest the unfounded fears of “privatization” in Lebanon, which usually just means unfair and inefficient monopolies and oligopolies (like our telecom sector), since the customer has the choice to either subscribe to EDZ or one of the other options and is not being forced to pay for something they didn’t choose to be part of. It also shows how IPPs (Independent Power Producers) can help solve the electricity issue once and for all in an ISO-certified manner that is cheaper for the consumer overall.

The question that remains is, will EDL remain keeping the millions of Lebanese people hostage so they can protect their concession while failing to deliver? And will the moteur cartels always be a dangerous and violent obstacle to progress from IPPs and other non-governmental entities that seek to fix this country’s woes, especially the power cuts, which even refugees running away from war have had difficulty getting accustomed to…

I’d like to thank Assaad and Zeina Nakad for their insight, time and hospitality, and Naji Jreissati for explaining more about the technical side of the operation. And of course, Jimmy Ghazal for helping set this field visit up and taking awesome shots of it!

(All photos taken by Jimmy Ghazal)