All the pictures in the article are Sumba island, which has an area of 11k km^2 and roughly 800k people (slightly less population density than the state of Cali

All the pictures in the article are Sumba island, which has an area of 11k km^2 and roughly 800k people (slightly less population density than the state of California), I'm not sure that really counts as small. Yes island interconnects seem reasonably unlikely. Similarly Hawaii has no interconnects between the main islands [0] despite being a first world locale. A different geography leading to a different grid structure the mainland US isn't "leapfrogging", it's just a different geography leading to a different grid structure. [0] https://puc.hawaii.gov/energy/ https://puc.hawaii.gov/energy/