Grid resilience, which has been a topic of industry focus as extreme weather events are occurring more frequently and the threat of cyber-attacks is growing, has moved to the forefront of a wider public debate in the wake of the recent power outages in Texas. The electric power industry is working diligently to develop resilience metrics and frameworks to guide the targeted deployment of advanced technologies on the grid. The development of such metrics and frameworks is highly complex; they must enable utilities to evaluate the cost of action (the cost of technology deployments in blue sky conditions to increase power system resilience) in comparison with the cost of inaction (increased societal impacts and recovery cost) in the context of a rapidly evolving and increasingly uncertain risk environment.
To help our members keep up with the latest developments in the emerging area of grid resilience, IEEE Power & Energy Society has created a number of resources on resilience. Below, we highlight a few notable contributions.
- IEEE PES Resilience Framework, Methods, and Metrics for the Electricity Sector IEEE PES-TR83 Webinar – Part I
IEEE-PES Webinar: February 2021
Author: Bill Chiu
The resilience of the electric grid is the foundational building block for our decarbonized clean energy future. While the concept of resiliency is not new, its application to the electric grid is not as straightforward due to the lack of a consistent definition of resilience or a mature set of metrics by which resilience or its application can be measured. This report provides an overview of resilience definitions, including its relationship with reliability, the existing frameworks for holistically defining resilience planning and implementation process, and the metrics to evaluate and benchmark resilience. - Improving Resilience of Transmission and Distribution Grids: ISO-NE and ComEd Experience
IEEE-PES Technical Report: December 2020
Authors: Aleksi Paaso, Slava Maslennikov
This presentation describes experience of ISO New England (ISO-NE) and ComEd in improving resilience of transmission and distribution grids. ISO-NE will share its experience with improving resilience of transmission system and moving to operational resilience, and ComEd will share its experience with designing the distribution grid for increased resilience. - Methods to Quantify and Respond to Risk in Power System Planning and Operation
PES GM Panel Session: August 2020
Chair: Miguel Ortega-Vazquez, Alberto Lamadrid
Electric power systems are continuing to undergo profound transformations. These changes are affecting not only the short-term uncertainty but also the long-term uncertainty, making the reliable operation and planning of adequate and coordinated generation and transmission expansion harder. This panel will explore these challenges as well as shape the discussion on the research needed to explicitly quantify and respond to system risk. The panel is composed of several experts with a track record on in this field. - Natural Disaster Mitigation: Best Practices, Methods and Resilience Metrics
PES GM Panel Session: August 2020
Chair: Jay Liu, Rafael Ferreira
Natural disaster mitigation is essential for sustainable and resilient power systems. Tracking utility best practices on natural disaster mitigation is not only a high demand from the industry, but also an integral effort in the R&D initiatives of power resiliency. Worldwide best practices have invoked great attentions in the Society on natural disaster mitigation operation method and planning strategy advances, and have sparked extensive R&D efforts on associated resiliency metrics and analysis methods. This panel will report the latest news and industry activities on this subject, followed by a town hall panel discussions by a group of leading scholars in the Society to address a comprehensive and systematic view of resilience metric on this subject. - Resilience Metrics and Modeling in Operation and Planning
PES GM Panel Session: August 2020
Chair: Jay Liu, Rafael Ferreira
Extreme weather events are no longer low probability events and they have extremely deteriorated the resilience of the power grid—during the period of 2014–2018, the average annual extreme events in the U.S. has doubled in comparison to the period of 1980–2018. Although several resilience metrics have been proposed, there have been no standard resilience metrics, nor are there standard methods to evaluate them. This panel addresses the advances in resilience modeling, metrics, and evaluation. Experts from regulatory, industry, and academia will review the progresses in resilience definition and its measurement, policy, and impacts on the industry and utility practices under extreme events. - Planning and Operating a Flexible and Resilient Grid: Lessons Learned and Vision for the Future
ISGT NA Panel Session: February 2019
Authors: M. Vaiman, A. Lee, S. Maslennikov, H. Zhang, R. Manuguid, N. Stenvig, P. Entingov
Maintaining reliable and resilient operation of the bulk power system is a fundamental aspect of grid operation, and focuses on ensuring the system can withstand sudden disturbances or unanticipated failures of system elements such that instability, uncontrolled separation, or cascading failures will not occur, and in case such events do occur, the system is able to quickly recover. The proposed panel session will feature presentations from four utilities (ERCOT, ISO New England, Peak Reliability, and San Diego Gas & Electric) describing their experience, lessons learned and future work on improving real-time models and advanced online applications that support their extensive efforts to enhance reliability and resilience of the grid in real-time and near real-time environments. The panel will also feature presenters from two National Labs, ORNL and PNNL, describing advanced technologies related to big data analytics (PNNL) and modeling efforts to support recovery work in Puerto Rico (ORNL). - Late Breaking News – Managing Today’s Grid for Reliability, Resiliency and Sustainability
PES GM Panel Session: August 2019
Authors: B. Chiu, M. Lauby, M. Blaise, B. Thompson, J.C. Montero Quiros, V. Rabl, M. Vaiman
The requirements for the electric power grid are evolving with customer expectations, challenges stemming from climate changes, and transition to renewable and distributed forms of generation. New and emerging technology can help to respond to these evolving requirements, while maintaining and improving the reliability and resiliency of the grid. For example, higher penetration of DER is requiring visibility and dynamic control at levels not seen before. This panel seeks to understand how electric utilities and technology providers are proposing new technologies and implement initiatives to the evolving grid. - Improving Power System Reliability and Resilience through the Use of Enhanced Modeling and Advanced On-line Software Tools
ISGT NA Panel Session: February 2019
Authors: M. Vaiman, A. Lee, S. Maslennikov, H. Zhang, R. Manuguid, N. Stenvig, P. Entingov
Maintaining reliable and resilient operation of the bulk power system is a fundamental aspect of grid operation, and focuses on ensuring the system can withstand sudden disturbances or unanticipated failures of system elements such that instability, uncontrolled separation, or cascading failures will not occur, and in case such events do occur, the system is able to quickly recover. The proposed panel session will feature presentations from four utilities (ERCOT, ISO New England, Peak Reliability, and San Diego Gas & Electric) describing their experience, lessons learned and future work on improving real-time models and advanced online applications that support their extensive efforts to enhance reliability and resilience of the grid in real-time and near real-time environments. The panel will also feature presenters from two National Labs, ORNL and PNNL, describing advanced technologies related to big data analytics (PNNL) and modeling efforts to support recovery work in Puerto Rico (ORNL). - Ensuring Grid Resilience through Policy, Standards and Market Constructs
PES GM Panel Session: August 2019
Authors: M. Lauby, P. Leevanschaick
The modern bulk electricity grid is a complex cyber-physical system, not only does it contain traditional generation, transmission and distribution systems, but also IT, communication and control systems.In addition, the reliable operation of the grid relies on other external infrastructures, such as transportation and gas pipeline networks, etc. Failures in any of these systems during extreme weather events or human attacks could lead to a system blackout, resulting in significant loss of the economy. This session will focus its discussion on the definition, metrics, and market solutions to grid resilience as well as its impact on stakeholders. Panelists will discuss the current status and potential enhancements to operating procedures, planning procedures, and incentives to ensure that resources are able to supply and deliver energy, and recover the system sufficiently, during various HILF events. - Data Analytics for Grid Resilience Modeling and Enhancement
ISGT NA Panel Session: February 2019
Authors: V. Vallem, A. Guzman, L. Roald, Y. Maximov
Recent extreme weather events have highlighted the importance and urgency of enhancing power grid resilience. Although resilience is generally recognized as the capability to anticipate, absorb, adapt to, and rapidly recover from disruptive events, there is not much consensus on the precise definition and quantitative measures for resilience. In this panel, we attempt to address resilience measures and modeling from a data analytics point of view. It will include a discussion on the fundamentals and some key ingredients in grid resilience by bringing perspectives from academia, research labs, industry, and governmental agencies. We hope to help our audience take the first crack at answering the following questions: What does grid resilience mean exactly? What are the metrics to evaluate resilience? What are the resilience enhancement strategies and how optimization and data analytics can help?
- “The Resilient Grid” Power and Energy Magazine – Volume 18: Issue 4 – July/August 2020
- “Electricity and Transportation for Social Welfare” IEEE Electrification Magazine, vol. 7, no. 3, Sept. 2019
- “Coordinating Electricity and Transportation Networks: Enhancing power grid resilience strategies against ice storms” M. Yan, M. Shahidehpour, J. Lu and X. Xu – IEEE Electrification Magazine, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 23-32, Sept. 2019, doi: 10.1109/MELE.2019.2925755.
- “Front Lines Against the Darkness: Enhancing the Resilience of the Electricity Grid Through Microgrid Facilities” A. Gholami, F. Aminifar, and M. Shahidehpour – IEEE Electrification Magazine, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 18-24, March 2016, doi: 10.1109/MELE.2015.2509879.
- “Building Resilient Integrated Grids: One Neighborhood at a Time.” Shay Bahramirad, Amin Khodaei, Joseph Svachula, and Julio Romero Aguero – IEEE Electrification Magazine, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 23-32, Sept. 2019, doi: 10.1109/MELE.2019.2925755.
- “Networked Microgrid Operations: Supporting a Resilient Electric Power Infrastructure.” Kevin P. Schneider, Craig Miller, Stuart Laval, Wei Du, and Dan Ton. – IEEE Electrification Magazine 8, no. 4 (2020): 70-79.
This topic is one being worked on by a variety of different groups both inside and outside of IEEE PES.
To learn more & get involved, please check out the IEEE Industry Technical Support Leadership Committee (ITLSC) page.