Resilience Framework, Methods, and Metrics for the Electricity Sector

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. It provides recommendations on how to use those frameworks and metrics and evaluates technologies, tools, and methods to improve electrical system resilience. To provide a practical perspective to addressing resilience, the report includes the progress made by electric grid operators in collaboration with regional authorities to strengthen the resilience posturing, including some of the more common practices and use cases to increase system resilience, enhance broader preparedness, and to combat the impacts of the various external impacts to the electric power grid. Those use cases include Southern California Edison, Con Edison, Entergy, Florida utilities, San Diego Gas & Electric, ComEd, Austin Energy, as well as transmission and distribution system hardening practices, wild-fire risk mitigation lessons learned from California, and NERC reliability and cyber-security standards.