Resilience Science and Design

Understanding the nuances of power system vulnerabilities and financing resilience solutions are barriers to implementing resilient systems. Our research is overcoming these barriers through robust resilience science and energy modeling.

Capabilities

• Systems design and engineering
• Developing metrics for resilience
• Financing for resilient energy systems
• Renewable energy integration for resilience
• Hardening and designing resilient renewable energy and hybrid systems
• Probabilistic modeling for resilience analyses

Quantifying the Value of Resilience

As natural disasters become more common, utilities and communities must improve the resilience of their energy systems. NREL has developed a framework to quantitatively model resilience metrics to show communities and utilities the benefits of investing in resilience strategies for the grid.

Examples of resilience metrics include the number of hours that customers are without power, the number of hospitals and fire stations without power, lost business and community economic revenue, and lost utility revenue. Instead of focusing on one resilience metric, which would not fit all disruption circumstances, NREL's resilience analysis framework provides a methodology to determine the value of multiple resilience metrics over time and at scale. The framework simulates power interruptions and resilience metrics in these models at varying scales to inform utility and community resilience investment and planning.

For system owners and operators tasked with weighing the cost of a resilience investment against the benefit it provides, understanding the value of resilience is important.

Publications

Integrating the Value of Electricity Resilience in Energy Planning and Operations Decisions, IEEE Systems Journal (2021)

Adapting Existing Energy Planning, Simulation, and Operational Models for Resilience Analysis, NREL Report (2020)

Quantifying and Monetizing Renewable Energy Resiliency, Sustainability (2018)

Valuing the Resilience Provided by Solar and Battery Energy Storage Systems, NREL Brochure (2018)

Microgrid-Ready Solar PV - Planning For Resiliency, NREL Fact Sheet (2017)

Resilient Renewable Energy Microgrids, NREL Presentation (2017)

Increasing Resiliency Through Renewable Energy Microgrids, Journal of Energy Management (2017)

Partnerships

NREL values its partnerships for furthering research and deployment of effective resilience solutions. Our partnerships include federal agencies, states, local governments, international governments, and the private sector. Learn more about partnering with NREL.

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