# Understanding Microgrid Sustainability: A Systemic and Comprehensive Review
## 5 Financial Field
### Financial Architecture  
In this work, the business model of a microgrid is the equivalent of its financial architecture. It is the tool through which the choices in ownership and governance are made and the strategic objectives of the microgrid are set. From the literature, three main microgrid business models or financial architectures can be pointed out: gathered business model, federated business model, and networked business model [84; 178]. These architectures are illustrated in Figure 9 and detailed in Table 8.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Architecture** & **Type** & **Description** & **Articles** \\ \hline \multirow{6}{*}{**Gathered—One main owner and maintainer of the microgrid [22]**} & Government utility ownership & The microgrid is owned by a public entity which takes care of its entire operation & [179] \\  & Third-party ownership & The microgrid is owned by a private entity which takes care of its operation & [58] \\  & & The owner cooperates with a large & \\  & & Anchor customer business model & infrastructure to ensure a minimum energy & [180] \\  & & Productive use of energy & The microgrid is linked with small businesses to ensure minimum revenues & [181] \\  & & Pay as you go & The community has more flexibility with its consumption of energy, paying just what they consume & [182] \\ \hline \multirow{6}{*}{**Federated—Multiple owners and maintainers of the microgrid**} & Mixed ownership & Customers own a part of the microgrid & [183] \\  & & Community-owned microgrid & The community owns the microgrid and takes care of its operation & [184] \\  & & Distributed model & A centralized entity owns the microgrid but shares the governance with the community & [185] \\  & & Energy as a service & The business model focuses on the best energy quality possible to develop the community & [186; 187; 188] \\  & & ICES & Integrated community energy system where the community participates in optimizing & [189] \\  & & & production \\  & & Virtual power plant & Prosumers can be assembled in a bigger entity that facilitates the operation of the microgrid & [190; 191] \\ \hline \multirow{6}{*}{**Networked—Community owns and operates the microgrid**} & Standalone systems & The combination of a distributed energy resource and a storage system allowing anybody to create their own microgrid & [192; 193] \\  & & Prosumers are connected together in a decentralized way, and each actor takes care of its own sources, exchanging energy with a peer-to-peer market & [118; 194; 195] \\  & & A decentralized peer-to-peer market where the price of energy fluctuates depending on the demand with some blockchains applications & [118; 196; 197; 198] \\ \cline{1-1}  & Energy internet model & The community is connected through a decentralized online tool for a network organization & [199] \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 8: Classification of microgrid business model architecture.  
Figure 9: Representation of the different financial architectures.  
It is essential to notice some similarities between the financial and the information architectures. The level of centralization of the control, the data, and the communication of the microgrid information nodes will be impacted or driven by the level of centralization of governance and ownership built into the financial architecture. An example from the literature is that a microgrid with a hierarchical information architecture will have a federated business model with different owners in different parts of the information pyramid [194; 195].