A Village Microgrid Architecture Designed to Survive Its Own Failure Modes

SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED. A microgrid for a stated village of 60 households is specified whose design premise is graceful degradation: the village is divided into four clusters of 15 households, each with its own share of a 60 kWp solar array, its own battery string (180 kWh in total), its own 12 kW inverter, and a direct-current bus carrying critical loads without passing through any inverter. An hourly simulation over a low-sun week (mean 2.11 peak sun hours per day) compares it with a conventional single-inverter design of identical total capacity under single failures. A dead inverter serves 0.0% of load in the conventional design and 72.3% in the clustered design; a failed battery string serves 50.6% against 66.9%; the loss of the only technician during an inverter fault serves 23.6% against 72.3%. The clustered design costs $321.66 more per household (14.19%). Simulation code and full output are included as supplementary files.