Microgrids based around solar can help developing countries leapfrog into a new energy paradigm – they make clean and cheap electricity available to the poorest, as Laurie Guevara-​Stone reports. Buying vegetables in a small town in Ecuador from a woman who had trekked from her farm miles away, barefoot, in traditional indigenous garb, made me feel I was back in time. As we were conducting our transaction, I heard a ringtone and instinctively reached into my pocket. The 70-year-old woman pulled out her cell phone. This woman, along with the majority of people in rural areas of the developing world, never had a land-line in her home, probably has no electricity, and may not even have a toilet. Yet she relies on her mobile phone. In fact, developing countries around the world have leapfrogged past the landline infrastructure of the industrialized world and now have more mobile users than those in high-income nations. It seems the same phenomenon may be happening in the electricity sector. Will microgrids allow developing nations to leapfrog past the large, … Continue reading Learning from the cell phone phenomenon