Hasbaiya in South Lebanon is home to around 8,000 Lebanese residents and 700 refugees who have been grappling with lengthy power outages, forcing the municipality to rely on eleven backup generators for electricity.

Since the onset of the economic crisis in 2019, the municipality’s budget has been strained, limiting its ability to cover the cost of operating and maintaining the generators, thereby fueling communal tensions over access to electricity. In response, in September 2022, USAID’s Community Support Program (CSP) installed a solar farm and upgraded Hasbaiya’s backup electricity infrastructure to ensure a continuous source of renewable energy. This intervention is ensuring a continuous power supply to more than 8,700 residents, while also significantly reducing municipal fuel consumption. By March 2024, the municipality had saved an estimated $20,000 in annual fuel costs, enabling it to plan for the construction of additional solar farms for the remaining zones in the village.

“This USAID project is playing a crucial role in sustaining local businesses by ensuring 24/7 electricity; it is also mitigating environmental risks by reducing fuel consumption by 2,500 liters monthly, “said Labib Hamra, Mayor of Hasbaiya.