The potential for swarm electrification as a flexible tool for last-mile energy access

Abstract

Swarm Electrification (SE) is gaining considerable attention as an exciting tool to provide last-mile electrification at the lowest possible cost. A swarm grid is similar to a micro-grid, but rather than a planned network, it is assembled in an ad-hoc fashion, simply connecting available equipment via a controller, and expanding the grid as more resources become available. This allows the owners of small solar home systems (SHSs) to sell excess energy and enables others to gain an electrical connection without investing in their own system. Creating an income for the prosumer and helping others to get on the electrification ladder. This paper provides the first review specific to SE, giving an overview of the current state of the technology. A search was performed using the following terms: Swarm electrification, bottom-up electrification, organic microgrids, ad-hoc microgrids, pico-grids, nano grids, mesh grids and P2P energy trading. This yielded 91 publications that implicitly mentioned swarm electrification or described an ad-hoc grid with P2P energy trading. Of these, 48 were selected for this review as they were deemed to represent the key aspects of SE. The main topics within the literature are identified discussed, and the key challenges are noted. It is recommended that further research be performed in the areas of optimisation, stability and reliability with a view to scaling up these grids to support small industrial devices.