LoRa-based Swarm Grid Implementation for Rural Electrification in Africa

The advancement of Solar Photo voltaic (PV) technologies has brought another solution for electrification in rural and off-grid villages in developing countries of Africa, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa. Distributed Solar Home Systems (SHSs) have become an essential solution for rural electrification for most people in off-grid communities. However, the electric energy generated using SHSs usually is not fully utilized and is partly wasted. The power generated during solar peak irradiation is neither utilized as most people work in farms during afternoons nor well stored due to limited storage capacity. Nonetheless, interconnecting multiple individual SHSs to form a swarm grid is obvious. It will include solar PV generation and battery storage. The swarm grids allow households and businesses in communities to effectively and productively utilize the surplus electric energy produced by community members with SHSs. Currently, swarm grids depend on the GSM networks for data communication among the connected consumers and prosumers. However, the network availability, reliability, and cost of services on the GSM network is a major challenge in rural areas. GSM network coverage, availability, and reliability have proven to fail due to the nature of the terrains of rural areas. This paper proposes a LoRa-based swarm grid whereby LoRa wireless communication is used for real-time load monitoring and control between consumers and prosumers. The proposed LoRa-based swarm grid can extend the benefit of having an affordable local wireless network and implement a real-time tariff and billing mechanism.