IEEE

Over 1.1 Billion people live with absolutely no access to electricity. At the same time, millions of people who normally enjoy a better life and energy access, find themselves, through war, climate change or increasingly frequent catastrophic HILF (High Impact Low Frequency) events, in a situation where the existing energy infrastructure is essentially destroyed. In both cases, the quality of life of more than a billion people is affected and it is clear that to build a new energy infrastructure for these deprived people and communities is a critical priority. A fundamental question facing us today is - ‘what should this new energy infrastructure look like?'... Should we continue with a 20 th century centralized paradigm that was designed in a time when only mechanical solutions were available, or should it be reimagined with fast-moving 21 st century technology with exponentially-declining prices, such as distributed generation, prosumers, dynamic pricing, microgrids, energy storage,..