Interconnection of microgrids for emerging economies

Jonathan Bowes

There are 1.1 billion people in the world with no access to electricity. This seems like an intangibly large number, so let’s consider what that means for an individual.

Think about your morning routine. You're woken up by your electric alarm clock, turn on the shower and have instant hot water, listen to the radio while drinking coffee with fresh milk from the fridge.

Electricity makes all of these conveniences possible. But for the 1.1 billion people with no electricity, it means more than just comfort and convenience.

Electricity provides lighting to study at night, water pumps to improve agriculture, power for healthcare centres and schools and access to information and communication via computers and mobile phones.

So, how can we connect these people? At present, there are two approaches:

  1. build or extend a national grid. This tends to be cost effective for highly populated areas, but more expensive for spread out populations. It also takes a long time, leaving many people without electricity for the foreseeable future and relies on large, fossil fuel power stations, which present their own problems
  2. use small, isolated systems for a single house or community, powered by wind, hydro, solar and small generators. They can be rolled out quickly to meet demands, but as human development increases, many fail to meet the growing demand and become expensive to upgrade, as they cannot benefit from economies of scale

Both approaches seem floored, but fear not, for there is a third approach.

My research investigates connecting together small systems to share energy. A community with solar panels could sell their excess energy on a sunny day and buy electricity on a cloudy, windy day from a neighbour with a wind turbine.  By reducing the variability of renewable energy, each community needs less generation, creating a web of connected systems, greater than the sum of its parts.

This solution can grow and evolve with demand and hopes to do for electricity what the internet did for information, removing the barrier for individuals to take control, putting communities at the centre of their the system and providing low cost, sustainable and reliable energy and all the benefits that can bring.