Grid Resilience Plans: State Requirements, Utility Practices, and Utility Plan Template

As of June 2024, 14 states and one city require jurisdictional electric utilities to file resilience plans. Drawing on these requirements and filed plans, this report offers a standard template that states and utilities can consider to improve utility filings for grid resilience plans, either as part of a distribution system plan or as a separate filing. Key elements include a vulnerability assessment, description of proposed resilience programs, and projected costs and rate impacts. While many of these requirements and plans focus on extreme weather hazards, the template also can be used to address additional threats, including cyber and physical …

How Cloud Computing Enhances Grid Resilience Against Escalating Threats

Our electric grid has never been more important — or more threatened. The frequency of extreme weather events, plus challenges caused by cyber criminals and an aging power system, continue to put an ever-increasing strain on our electric grid. To prepare for the future and make the move toward cleaner energy, cloud computing is key.

In our latest playbook, learn how utilities are leveraging cloud computing for everything from machine learning and analytics to proactive maintenance to customer service and more. Learn the benefits of cloud computing, including:

– Insights from machine learning and analytics – More effective outage response

Power Grid Resilience Under Wildfire: A Review on Challenges and Solutions

This paper studies the potential impacts of wildfires on the electric power grid, and explores the challenges and solutions for reducing the intensity, duration and impact of this unfavorable event on the grid. To this end, the paper overviews the efforts toward impact analysis and risk evaluation of wildfire and forecasting models to estimate the wildfire damages. Then the solutions to improve different aspects of grid resilience including robustness, resourcefulness, rapid recovery and adaptability are discussed. The mitigation solutions are categorized in four groups including situational awareness, preventive activities, corrective responses, and restorative actions. The state-of-the-art methodologies and algorithms in …

Rooftop Solar and the 2021 Texas Power Crisis: Exploring Small-Scale Solar’s Potential to Improve Grid Resilience During a Deep Freeze Event

Solar energy is a remarkable resource. It is abundant – the U.S. has the technical potential to meet its 2020 electricity needs 78 times over with solar power alone. As a clean and renewable energy source that can help reduce reliance on dirty fossil fuels, it helps reduce pollution and protect the environment. Rooftop solar is particularly environmentally friendly, since it takes advantage of already-developed rooftops and leaves open spaces undisturbed. One additional benefit that small-scale, distributed solar offers to communities is helping to relieve strain on the power grid during times of stress. This paper explores how maximizing rooftop …

Expert perceptions of enhancing grid resilience with electric vehicles in the United States

This paper examines expert perceptions of enhancing grid resilience with electric vehicles in the United States.

Electricity and transportation systems in industrialized countries are undergoing transformations that, if coordinated, could improve the resilience and environmental performance of energy systems. The electrification of transportation and the expansion of renewable electricity can be leveraged by the bidirectional smart charging of electric vehicles, called “vehicle-grid integration” (VGI). Studies to date have focused on simulations and pilot studies to estimate the technical potential of VGI. We survey members of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Electricity Advisory Committee using a Delphi approach to assess VGI’s …

Issue Brief: FERC’s Decision on the DOE’s Proposed Grid Resilience Rule

This issue brief provides a summary of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)’s decision
on the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Proposed Rule on Grid Reliability and Resilience Pricing. The
proposed rule provided cost recovery to coal and nuclear power under the guise of promoting grid
resilience with preference for a 90-day supply of on-site fuel. On Jan. 8, 2018, FERC issued an order
to terminate the rulemaking proceeding and established a new proceeding to gather additional
information on resilience. FERC’s decision was a 5-0 unanimous agreement, with concurring
opinions by Commissioners Cheryl LaFleur, Neil Chatterjee and Richard Glick. The independent…

The Department Of Energy’s Grid Resilience Pricing Proposal: A Cost Analysis

On September 28, 2017, the US Department of Energy (DOE) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR), proposing significant changes to the nation’s wholesale markets for electricity. The NOPR directs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to develop new tariffs to compensate unregulated units with a 90-day on-site supply of fuel for their “operating and fuel expenses, costs of capital and debt via debt relief companies, and a fair return on equity and investment.”2 The full text of the memo makes clear that the rule is intended to apply to coal and nuclear facilities, which it mentions as having …

Optimizing Energy and Load Management in Island Microgrids for Enhancing Resilience Against Resource Interruptions

The increasing integration of distributed renewable energy sources (RES), energy storage systems (ESS), electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, and demand response (DR) mechanisms has significantly enhanced microgrid deployment. However, the operational complexity and vulnerability of islanded microgrids to disruptions, especially during renewable energy fluctuations, pose critical challenges. Existing approaches primarily focus on minimizing operational costs or emissions but fail to simultaneously address load curtailment, voltage stability, and resilience under uncertain conditions. In this paper, we propose a novel resilience-oriented energy and load management framework for island microgrids, integrating a multi-objective optimization function that explicitly minimizes load curtailment, energy losses, voltage …

Reimagining Resilience: A Framework for Integrating Customer-Sited and Grid-Scale DERs

In 2021, the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) developed the Microgrid Design Framework to provide the industry with a 10 step process for resilience-focused microgrid design. The 2021 framework sought to break communication silos down utilities and third-parties to improve microgrid project success and support the industry in addressing community resilience to natural hazard risks via microgrid deployment. Recognizing that the 2021 framework does not capture the full landscape of stakeholders, solutions, and business models for successfully improving resilience for utility customers and communities, this update builds on that framework and SEPA’s experience working directly with state energy offices, utilities, …

Building Climate Resilience Through Energy Access? An Empirical Study on Grid Connectivity in the Indian Sundarbans

Scholarly debates on energy and climate change have successfully foregrounded mitigation measures, but often overlook the role of energy in climate adaptation. Adaptation is of key importance to building resilience to climate change impacts, but its link with energy access has not been studied in detail. This study aims to address this research gap by examining the relation between electricity access and climate resilience in the context of Bally Island in the Indian Sundarbans. The authors deploy a qualitative research approach to investigate whether and how the electricity grid, installed to Bally in 2019, aids residents to build resilience against …