Resilient Energy Platform

The Resilient Energy Platform helps countries understand and plan for natural, technological, and human-caused power system threats.

Power lines falling over, creating a road hazard. A power service truck is parked on the road beneath them.

Severe weather can cause flooding, landslides, and other threats to power system infrastructure and affect energy resource availability. Renewable energy generation can enhance resilience due to its modular nature and lack of fuel requirements. Photo from iStock

The provision of reliable, secure, and affordable electricity is essential to power economic growth and development. Power systems are at risk from an array of natural, human-caused, and technological threats, which can cause everything from power interruption to chronic undersupply of energy. That’s why it is critical for policymakers, planners, and system operators to safeguard their power systems from these threats by proactively planning for future needs and investing in resilient power systems.

To help countries plan for power sector resilience, the USAID-NREL Partnership developed the Resilient Energy Platform, which provides an expertly curated collection of training materials, tools, data, case studies and other publications to support decision makers in assessing power sector vulnerabilities, identifying resilience solutions, and making informed decisions to enhance power sector resilience at all scales.

Power sector vulnerabilities—weaknesses within infrastructure, systems, or operations—are susceptible to natural, technological, and human-caused threats. Impacts from these threats include:

  • Power outages resulting from physical infrastructure damage
  • Fuel supply shortages
  • Shifts in energy demand
  • Financial and economic implications associated with such events.

These disruptions can adversely affect critical services and facilities, such as hospital services, water treatment, and communications networks, as well as key economic sectors. For this reason, it's vital to understand and plan for threats to the power system and their associated impacts. The Resilient Energy Platform guides decision makers through the process of developing resilient energy systems.

To learn more, visit the Resilient Energy Platform website or review other supplementary resources including a Resilient Energy Platform overview webinar, or any of the topic-specific quick-reads including Institutional Solutions to Enhance Power Sector Resilience and Power Sector Resilience Technical Solutions.

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Planning a Resilient Power Sector

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Planificación De Un Sector Energético Resiliente

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Guidebook Offers Step-By-Step Process to Enhance Power Sector Resilience

A guidebook has been developed and released by the USAID-NREL Partnership—the Power Sector Resilience Planning Guidebook: A Self-Guided Reference for Practitioners. As a manual for power sector resilience planning, this guidebook can be used by policymakers, power sector investors, planners, system operators, and other energy-sector stakeholders to facilitate discussions and complete key steps of a power sector resilience planning process. Stakeholders can use the guidebook to develop strategic, country-specific processes that identify and implement actions to increase power sector resilience.

The guidebook covers topics such as threats, impacts, vulnerabilities, risks, and resilient solutions. Each chapter includes activities that support planning and a presentation that can be used as a reference for background material or to conduct training workshops.

Flowchart with arrows pointing from and to the following: Engage Stakeholders, Gather Data, Assess Vulnerabilities, Develop Strategies, Enact Enabling Policies, and Evaluate.

Planning for power sector resilience can happen at different geographic scales (e.g., local, regional [within a country], or national), and should be incorporated into existing power sector planning and policies to ensure effectiveness.

An online version of the guidebook is available on the Resilient Energy Platform website.

Group photo of 10 people in front of the Electricite Du Laos reception desk

Technical Committee of the Energy Alternative Study for the Lao PDR celebrating the final workshop of the program. Photo by NREL

Lao PDR Power Sector Vulnerability Assessment and Resilience Action Plan

USAID's Clean Power Asia program partnered with NREL to assess the power sector of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR) vulnerability to natural, technological, and human-caused threats, and to develop a resilience action plan to address the highest-risk vulnerabilities.

To lead and inform these activities, an advisory group was established. It is composed of representatives of the Lao Ministry of Mines and Energy, the state-owned utility (Électricité du Laos or EDL), and the generation company (Électricité du Laos-Generation).

The NREL and USAID Clean Power Asia team worked with the advisory group and employed a participatory approach to assess power sector vulnerabilities and address the highest-risk vulnerabilities through effective resilience strategies that:

  • Emphasizes the unique context of the power sector in Lao PDR
  • Relies on extensive stakeholder engagement
  • Involves detailed review of the latest scientific research to support a vulnerability assessment
  • Draws on international best practices and expert input to develop resilience strategies and implementation action plan for the Lao PDR.
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