Swarm electrification - Suggesting a paradigm change through building microgrids bottom-up

This paper outlines a bottom-up concept for microgrids. 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 microgrid 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.