Solving the Last mile Problem for energy self-forming nano-grids

Abstract

In the later part of the 1980s, the telephony industry struggled with the cost of connecting subscribers over the last mile to serve millions of people in the developing world. While the cost of switching and transmission lines is shared across hundreds or thousands of subscribers, this advantage diminishes at the edge of the network where the cost must be borne by fewer and ultimately individual subscribers. In power grids today a similar situation exists. The Last-mile Problem was resolved when the cost of cellular telephones was reduced by integrating functions and components into silicon circuits and when African entrepreneurs found novel financial models to enable even the poorest to acquire a cell phone. Using parallel principles to provide energy where the infrastructure and the required capital investment do not exist, the self-forming nano-grid project discussed in this paper can start from a single photovoltaic (PV) panel and battery each with attached inverters yet scale up to tens of kilowatts. This system also incorporates load management in a power distribution panel to set priority for load shedding to keep critical loads powered in the face of minimal generation and no conventional grid resources.