Get Ready: Recent Resource Equips States & Utilities for Grid Resilience Situations

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Modern society’s reliance on electricity for crucial services is growing. Projections from the Energy Information Administration (Short Term Energy Outlook) and numerous utilities indicate a surge in electricity demand due to data centers and new manufacturing plants, leading to anticipated record-high nationwide electricity consumption.

To meet the rising power demands effectively, electricity grids must display resilience against both natural and human-induced threats such as storms, floods, droughts, extreme temperatures, freezes, hurricanes, sea level rise, wildfires, seismic activities, and cyber and physical assaults. The escalating frequency and intensity of extreme weather incidents, in particular, present unprecedented challenges to grid resilience, which is defined as the capacity to plan for, adapt to, endure, and swiftly recover from disruptions to minimize impacts (Presidential Policy Directive 21). The year 2023 witnessed more billion-dollar disasters than any other year on record. All 50 states have experienced at least one of these calamities in the past decade (NOAA).

In the last ten years, notable advancements have been achieved in enhancing grid resilience. Berkeley Lab’s latest report acts as a guide for states and utilities to further enhance their resilience planning procedures amid rapidly evolving risks and associated technologies necessitated for their mitigation.

By June 2024, fourteen states and one municipal entity mandate electric utilities to submit resilience plans (Figure 1). While the requirements of most states mainly target investor-owned utilities, some states’ directives also encompass rural electric cooperatives, municipal utilities, or both.

Between May 2022 and June 2024, at least thirty utilities submitted one or more resilience plans as per the identified requirements from Berkeley Lab. These plans impact over 47 million customers of utility services, with the objective of enhancing grid resilience for approximately 130 million individuals, constituting 39% of the U.S. population.

Relying on state regulations and utility submissions, Berkeley Lab’s latest report summarizes emerging best practices and provides a standard framework that states and utilities can modify to suit their specific requirements based on policy goals, local threats, and the utility infrastructure and processes under consideration. Key components of the framework include a vulnerability evaluation (refer to the layout in Figure 2), outlining proposed resilience initiatives, and forecasting costs and rate implications. While the emphasis of the framework is on extreme weather occurrences, it also encompasses other perils including cyber and physical attacks, as well as seismic incidents. Utilities can use this framework even in the absence of state-mandated resilience planning stipulations.

The report was authored by Josh Schellenberg and Lisa Schwartz, with support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. DOE Office of Science national laboratory managed by the University of California.

Contact: Lisa Schwartz, Berkeley Lab’s Energy Markets and Policy Department