Resilient Electricity Networks for a productive Grid Architecture (RENGA)

电力供应被广泛认为是人类发展的关键推动因素之一。为发展中国家的低收入地区供电涉及巨大的技术、地缘政治和社会经济挑战。近年来，自主供电系统（AESS）在取代煤油灯和蜡烛作为基本照明来源方面发挥了作用。然而，它们的额定功率太低，甚至不能为小型机械提供动力，这使得它们对人们生产商品的方式几乎没有影响。根据既定的电力系统规划模式，使电力供应适合于更有生产力的应用的方法是建立新的输电走廊，将电力从大型发电厂运送到偏远地区，在那里使用区域配电网进行配电。虽然这一办法在世纪中期证明是成功的，但它往往造成高昂的费用，使这类项目在发展中国家不可行。旧模式的主要问题之一是，它错过了利用当今可用的分布式能源（即小规模发电，储能等）来降低成本并实现更好的能源供应的机会。该项目的目的是通过研究一种新的方法来解决这个问题，其中电网将从小型AESS的本地互连开始。这一雄心勃勃的目标将需要研究一种合适的技术解决方案，将多个AESS连接在一起，开发适合优化互联AESS网络运营和规划的新工具，并为农村电气化应用量身定制需求和发电模型。这项工作将以卢旺达为主要研究案例，与卢旺达大学合作，为模型的推导提供支持，并将研究和验证最有趣的电力生产用途，以满足卢旺达农村的具体需求。这项工作还将与BBOXX和Meshpower合作进行，这两家英国公司由伦敦帝国理工学院的校友创办，在包括卢旺达在内的世界多个国家将AESS商业化。

Electricity access is widely acknowledged as one of the key enablers of human development. Bringing electricity to low income areas in the developing world involves great technical, geopolitical and socioeconomic challenges. In recent years, autonomous electricity supply systems (AESS) have found a role in replacing kerosene lamps and candles as sources for basic lighting. However, their power rating was too low to power even small machinery, which made them have very little impact on the way people produce goods. According to the well-established power systems planning paradigm, the way to enable electricity access suitable for more productive applications is to build new transmission corridors to ship power from large power plants to isolated areas where it will be distributed using regional distribution networks. While this approach proved successful in the mid twentieth century, it often incurs prohibitive costs that make such projects infeasible in developing countries. One of the main issues of the old paradigm is that it misses the opportunity to use distributed energy resources (ie small scale generation, energy storage, etc) available today to drive the costs down and achieve better energy supply. The aim of this project is to bring some light over this matter by investigating a new approach where the electrical network would start from the local interconnection of small scale AESS. This ambitious goal will require the investigation of a suitable technological solution to link multiple AESS together, the development of new tools that are suitable to optimise the operation and planning of a network of interconnected AESS with models of demand and generation tailored for rural electrification applications. The work will use Rwanda as the main study case with the cooperation of the University of Rwanda, that will provide support for the derivation of models and will study and characterise the most interesting productive uses of electricity to meet the specific needs in rural Rwanda. The work will also be carried in collaboration with BBOXX and Meshpower, two British companies started by alumni of Imperial College London that commercialise AESS in several countries around the world including Rwanda.