A Review of Examples and Opportunities to Quantify the Grid Reliability and Resilience Impacts of Energy Efficiency

Grid reliability and resilience are foundational to meeting electricity needs and have significant economic and societal impacts. Energy efficiency can help meet grid reliability objectives and improve resilience, but metrics and methods used today may not fully recognize these benefits. This paper explains how existing planning processes for bulk power and distribution systems capture the impact of energy efficiency on power system reliability and resilience, with illustrative examples. We identify limitations in using existing reliability and resilience metrics to quantify efficiency and other distributed energy resource (DER) benefits. The paper concludes with opportunities for regulators and utilities to enhance planning …

How Advanced Nuclear Generation Technologies Support Electric Grid Resilience

This paper articulates the case that deployment of advanced nuclear generation technologies can and should play a major role in enhancing electric grid resilience. Before addressing specific factors in support of this broad proposition, it is necessary to define the scope of the recommendation, as well as to clarify issues to be addressed.

This article clarifies how advanced nuclear generation technologies could be deployed to enhance the “resilience” of the electric grid and to address emerging challenges associated with current electric grid evolution. Advanced nuclear technologies could also decrease the potential for negative consequences in the aftermath of public policy …

West Virginia Regional Microgrids for Resilience Study

Microgrids allow customers and communities to minimize impacts of power outages by incorporating local power generation and energy storage to supplement the traditional power grid. Microgrids are one approach to bolster resilience of communities affected by power outages due to a natural disaster or extreme weather event.

The report identifies opportunities for deploying microgrids to increase the resilience for the state of West Virginia. It includes results from SEPA’s three-phased approach with key stakeholders in West Virginia to prioritize and evaluate potential microgrids for resilience. As part of this project, SEPA collected data to develop two mapping resources that stakeholders …

A Review of Examples and Opportunities to Quantify the Grid Reliability and Resilience Impacts of Energy Efficiency

Grid reliability and resilience are foundational to meeting electricity needs and have significant economic and societal impacts. Energy efficiency can help meet grid reliability objectives and improve resilience, but metrics and methods used today may not fully recognize these benefits. This paper explains how existing planning processes for bulk power and distribution systems capture the impact of energy efficiency on power system reliability and resilience, with illustrative examples. We identify limitations in using existing reliability and resilience metrics to quantify efficiency and other distributed energy resource (DER) benefits. The paper concludes with opportunities for regulators and utilities to enhance planning …

Advancing Vehicle-to-Grid Technology Adoption: Policy Recommendations for Improved Energy Security and Resilience

The report, “Advancing Vehicle-to-Grid Technology Adoption,” calls on policymakers to “future-proof” electric vehicles and charging infrastructure to ensure that the U.S. is poised to take advantage of V2G’s many benefits. Given increased frequency of unprecedented extreme weather events, the technology can enhance critical infrastructure resilience and emergency preparedness. V2G enables EVs to serve as “mobile energy storage units” and can provide power during outages. With bidirectional charging technology, EVs can help manage system loads during periods of high electricity demand. A single electric school bus, for example, has enough battery storage capacity to power a hospital operating room …

Electricity Grid: DOE Should Address Lessons Learned from Previous Disasters to Enhance Resilience

Natural disasters, such as cyclones, earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, and severe storms—and the power outages resulting from these disasters—have affected millions of customers and cost billions of dollars. The growing severity of wildfires and extreme weather events in recent years has been a principal contributor to an increase in the frequency and duration of power outages in the U.S. Federal agencies, such as DOE and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, play a significant role in disaster response, recovery, and resilience.

This report (1) identifies lessons learned from federal, state, and other entities’ responses to selected disasters that affected the electricity grid …

Electric School Buses and the Grid: Unlocking the Power of School Transportation to Build Resilience and a Clean Energy Future

School buses are the largest form of public transportation in the United States. Every day, 480,000 of them carry up to half of America’s children to school and back.

Currently, fewer than 1% of the nation’s school buses are powered by electricity, but with advances in electric bus technology, growing understanding of the benefits of electrification, and now a fresh influx of federal money through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, electric school buses are becoming an increasingly viable option for school districts. Electric school bus models are now available to meet every use case, and the number of districts …

Valuing Resilience for Microgrids: Challenges, Innovative Approaches, and State Needs

The United States depends on the delivery of reliable, affordable, clean, and safe electricity. Electric utilities invest billions of dollars each year in generation, transmission, and distribution assets to meet this need. However, experiences with recent natural disasters of increasing frequency and duration demonstrate the shortcomings of this approach in the face of modern threats. Further, as customers rely on electricity for a broader range of important needs, such as transportation, as well as critical life-saving services and mission critical facilities such as water treatment, medical care, shelters, telecommunications, and more, the need to minimize the likelihood and impacts of …

Electricity Grid Resilience

The nation’s grid delivers electricity that is essential for our modern life.

However, risks such as extreme weather, cyberattacks, and electromagnetic events like solar storms can damage our electrical infrastructure (like power lines) and communications systems. The resulting power outages can threaten the nation’s economic and national security.

With examples drawn from several GAO reports, we describe these risks and highlight key opportunities to improve federal efforts in this area.…

User Objectives and Design Approaches for Microgrids: Options for Delivering Reliability and Resilience, Clean Energy, Energy Savings, and Other Priorities

Customers choose to install microgrids based on a wide range of motivations, which often include increasing reliability and resilience, decreasing electricity costs, expanding access to clean energy, and/or providing power to remote communities (e.g., when extending the existing transmission/distribution grid is infeasible or too costly). Customer motivations are not mutually exclusive; in fact, customers often have multiple motivations for installing a microgrid, such as increasing renewable generation while improving reliability and resilience. This paper cites numerous examples of operational microgrids across the country that represent one or more of these objectives.…