Swarm Electrification - Suggesting a Paradigm Shift through Building Microgrids Bottom-up

Swarm Electrification - Suggesting a Paradigm Shift through Building Microgrids Bottom-up

Presenter: Sebastian Groh, Research Focus Microenery Systems, Technische Universität Berlin

Overview

This paper outlines a bottom-up concept for micro-grids. It investigates how a grid can be build bottom-up in an economically sustainable way and how this approach relates to the current trend on micro-grids. A case study for Bangladesh illustrates the potential for building on the existing infrastructure of solar home systems and underlines the strength of the approach: it aims at economic and infrastructure development created from the communities themselves. Individual stand-alone energy systems are linked together to form a micro-grid that can expand towards and eventually interconnect with national or regional grids. This approach can be likened to the concept of swarm intelligence, where each individual node brings independent input to create a conglomerate of value even greater than the sum of its parts.