In June 2011, President Obama released "A Policy Framework for the 21st Century Grid" which set out a strategy for modernizing the electric grid. The initiative directed billions of dollars toward investments in 21st century smart grid technologies focused at increasing the grid's efficiency, reliability, and resilience, and making it less vulnerable to weather-related outages and reducing the time it takes to restore power after an outage occurs. Grid resilience is increasingly important as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of severe weather, which is the leading cause of power outages in the U.S. Between 2003 and 2012, an estimated 679 widespread power outages occurred due to severe weather. This report estimates the annual cost of power outages caused by severe weather between 2003 and 2012 and describes various strategies for modernizing the grid and increasing grid resilience. Over this period, weather-related outages are estimated to have cost the U.S. economy an inflation-adjusted annual average of $18 billion to $33 billion. Continued investment in grid modernization and resilience will mitigate these costs over time. Figures. This is a print on demand report.

Americans' safety, productivity, comfort, and convenience depend on the reliable supply of electric power. The electric power system is a complex "cyber-physical" system composed of a network of millions of components spread out across the continent. These components are owned, operated, and regulated by thousands of different entities. Power system operators work hard to assure safe and reliable service, but large outages occasionally happen. Given the nature of the system, there is simply no way that outages can be completely avoided, no matter how much time and money is devoted to such an effort. The system's reliability and resilience can be improved but never made perfect. Thus, system owners, operators, and regulators must prioritize their investments based on potential benefits. Enhancing the Resilience of the Nation's Electricity System focuses on identifying, developing, and implementing strategies to increase the power system's resilience in the face of events that can cause large-area, long-duration outages: blackouts that extend over multiple service areas and last several days or longer. Resilience is not just about lessening the likelihood that these outages will occur. It is also about limiting the scope and impact of outages when they do occur, restoring power rapidly afterwards, and learning from these experiences to better deal with events in the future.

POWER GRID RESILIENCE AGAINST NATURAL DISASTERS How to protect our power grids in the face of extreme weather events The field of structural and operational resilience of power systems, particularly against natural disasters, is of obvious importance in light of climate change and the accompanying increase in hurricanes, wildfires, tornados, frigid temperatures, and more. Addressing these vulnerabilities in service is a matter of increasing diligence for the electric power industry, and as such, targeted studies and advanced technologies are being developed to help address these issues generally—whether they be from the threat of cyber-attacks or of natural disasters. Power Grid Resilience against Natural Disasters provides, for the first time, a comprehensive and systematic introduction to resilience-enhancing planning and operation strategies of power grids against extreme events. It addresses, in detail, the three necessary steps to ensure power grid success: the preparedness prior to natural disasters, the response as natural disasters unfold, and the recovery after the event. Crucially, the authors put forward state-of-the-art methods towards improving today’s practices in managing these three arenas. Power Grid Resilience against Natural Disasters readers will also find: Data, tables, and illustrations to supplement and clarify the points put forward in each chapter Case studies on realistic power systems and industry standards and practices related to the topics covered Potential to be a supplementary text in advanced level power engineering courses Power Grid Resilience against Natural Disasters will be of interest to specialists and engineers, as well as planners and operators from industry. It can also be a useful resource for senior undergraduate students, postgraduate students, researchers, and research libraries. More, it will appeal to all readers with a strong background in power system analysis, operation and control, optimization methods, the Markov decision process, and probability and statistics.

This book provides a comprehensive overview and in-depth discussion of smart grid resilience. It covers the three most critical resilience problems facing smart grids—resilience against extreme weather, resilience against cyber-physical attacks, and resilience under system inter-dependency. Each of these topics increases the risk of large-scale system-wide cascading failures. In-depth chapters allow the reader to define and quantify the smart grid’s ability to deal with extreme events and the critical infrastructures systems that connect it. Methods for improving system design are introduced along with effective strategies for protecting the system with minimal disruption of power supply and economic and social losses in extreme conditions. Smart Grid Resilience: Extreme Weather, Cyber-Physical Security, and System Interdependency is an essential guide for a broad audience of practicing professionals, including policymakers, electric utility engineers, and transmission and distribution system operators. It will also be a valuable reference for students and researchers.

National Critical Functions (NCFs) are government and private-sector functions so vital that their disruption would debilitate security, the economy, public health, or safety. Researchers developed a risk management framework to assess and manage the risk that climate change poses to the NCFs and use the framework to assess 27 priority NCFs. This report details the risk assessment portions of the framework.

Electric Power Systems Resiliency: Modelling, Opportunity and Challenges considers current strengths and weaknesses of various applications and provides engineers with different dimensions of flexible applications to illustrate their use in the solution of power system improvement. Detailing advanced methodologies to improve resiliency and describing resilient-oriented power system protection and control techniques, this reference offers a deep study on the electrical power system through the lens of resiliency that ultimately provides a flexible framework for cost-benefit analysis to improve power system durability. Aimed at researchers exploring the significance of smart monitoring, protecting and controlling of power systems, this book is useful for those working in the domain of power system control and protection (PSOP). - Features advanced methodologies for improving electrical power system resiliency for different architectures, e.g., smart grid, microgrid and macro grid - Discusses resiliency in power generation, transmission and distribution comprehensively throughout - Includes case studies that illustrate the applications of resilience in power systems

Distributed Generation and its Implications for the Utility Industry examines the current state of the electric supply industry; the upstream and downstream of the meter; the various technological, business, and regulatory strategies; and case studies that look at a number of projects that put new models into practice. A number of powerful trends are beginning to affect the fundamentals of the electric utility business as we know it. Recent developments have led to a fundamental re-thinking of the electric supply industry and its traditional method of measuring consumption on a volumetric basis. These developments include decreasing electricity demand growth; the rising cost of fossil fuels and its impact on electricity costs; investment in energy efficiency; increasing numbers of prosumers who generate for some or all of their own needs; and market reforms. This book examines the implications of these trends in chapters focusing on distributed and decentralized generation, transactive energy, the role of electric vehicles, any much more. - Discusses the technological, business, and policy trends most impacting the electric utility sector - Provides an assessment of how fast and how soon distributed energy resources may make an impact on utility sales/revenues - Explores, through a series of international case studies, the implementation of strategies that may help retain the viability of the utility industry - Features contributions from a number of scholars, academics, experts and practitioners from different parts of the world focused on examining the future of the electric supply industry