Enhancing Resilience and Sustainability of Renewable Energy Microgrids in Rural Africa from an Interdisciplinary Design Perspective: Driven by Community Engagement and Technological Innovation

Abstract

Despite Africa's immense potential for renewable energy development, electricity access in rural areas remains low. Existing microgrid projects often face challenges such as insufficient resilience, low community engagement, and poor technological adaptability, which hinder their long-term sustainability. This study proposes and constructs an innovative interdisciplinary design framework that integrates community engagement theories from social sciences, microgrid optimization design principles from engineering, and sustainability assessment methods from environmental sciences. The aim is to create a highly adaptable and resilient microgrid system suitable for rural African environments. Using a typical rural community in Tanzania as a case study, we employed a mixed-methods approach, including questionnaire surveys, in-depth interviews, and field monitoring data collection. Multi-objective optimization algorithms were utilized for the detailed design and simulation of the microgrid system, comprehensively evaluating its performance under various scenarios. The results are encouraging: high levels of community engagement significantly enhance both the social acceptance and operational efficiency of microgrids; technological innovations, particularly modular and off-grid energy storage solutions, substantially boost system resilience during extreme conditions. This unequivocally demonstrates that our proposed interdisciplinary design framework can provide effective guidance for the planning and implementation of sustainable microgrids in rural Africa. This research not only offers new theoretical perspectives and practical pathways for the resilient and sustainable development of renewable energy microgrids in rural Africa but also profoundly reveals the core role of design thinking in solving complex socio-technical problems, providing valuable decision-making bases for relevant policymakers and project implementers.