Plan and Implement Solutions
Guidance
Solutions may fall into different categories of power sector interventions:
- Long-term planning in the form of comprehensive community plans, threat mitigation plans, watershed plans, and others.
- Regulations and policies, such as zoning, subdivision codes, floodplain regulations, and building codes.
- Programs like capacity building, land acquisition, and low-income housing.
- Capital projects, such as capital improvement, decentralized backup energy generation for critical facilities, passive stormwater management system designs, etc.
Power sector resilience—the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing conditions and withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from disruptions to the power sector through adaptable and holistic planning and technical solutions.1
Renewable energy solutions, especially as distributed generation sources, can play a valuable role in power sector resilience through redundancy and energy diversification.
Power Sector Resilience Technical Solutions Quick Read
Diversifying energy generation sources, distributed generation, energy storage, demand-side management and efficiency, smart grids, and relocating or fortifying vulnerable assets are among technical solutions for power sector resilience
Planning for resilience solutions should always be part of an integrated and existing planning process, include stakeholder engagement (including nonutility entities), be linked to implementation and financing mechanisms, and should be periodically revisited. This process should involve a prioritization of resilience actions that can be based on such factors as priority threats, cost, difficulty, or number and priority of enhanced systems. Some examples of power system resilience solutions are shown in Table 6.
Table 6: Examples of Resilience Solutions and their Impact on Power System Resilience
|
Example Resilience Solution |
Impact on Power System Resilience |
|
|
Spatial and Generation Diversification |
Reduces the vulnerability of the energy supply system and the probability of an event to damage the larger system of critical locations, which increases system resilience. |
|
|
A microgrid capable of islanding may ensure customers have access to power during long-term power outages that impact central grid systems occurring after major events. Microgrids can also be used in demand-response programs to reduce peak loads. |
||
|
Redundancy |
Including additional resources beyond those that are required for daily operations increases a power system’s resilience because these resources can be relied on during other infrastructure failures or fuel shortages. |
|
|
Policy |
An enabling policy landscape helps to accelerate the adoption of power system resilience solutions. Restrictive policies can stifle resilience efforts. |
|
|
Others: Supply chain assurance, critical load panels in emergency facilities, passive survivability, load shedding, energy storage. |
|
|
Training Materials: Power Sector Resilience Solutions
These slides provide a more detailed background information on the entire power sector resilience planning process, including examples of solutions and how to prioritize them.
The first two activities in this section provide an approach to identify and prioritize technical solutions to support power sector resilience.
Activity: Identify Resilience Solutions
In this activity, you will identify potential solutions to enhance power sector resilience based on your knowledge of the threats, vulnerabilities, and risks developed in previous activities.
Activity: Resilience Solution Prioritization
In this activity, you will prioritize power sector resilience solutions, identified in previous activities, by their impact and effectiveness. Prioritizing these solutions will lay the foundation for future collaboration on targeted planning, policy programs, and/or projects for all participants. This may enable participants to develop strategies for solutions under their authority.
Power sector resilience solutions will fit within a broader planning process. Figure 4 provides one such example and can be tailored to meet the needs of individual countries and jurisdictions.
Activity: Developing a Resilience Planning Process
This activity provides a high-level activity that can inform a more thorough power sector resilience planning process.
Figure 4. Planning for power sector resilience
Resources:
Activities
Identify Resilience Solutions
In this activity, you will identify potential solutions to enhance power sector resilience based on your knowledge of the threats, vulnerabilities, and risks developed in previous activities.
Resilience Solution Prioritization
In this activity, you will prioritize power sector resilience solutions, identified in previous activities, by their impact and effectiveness. Prioritizing these solutions will lay the foundation for future collaboration on targeted planning, policy programs, and/or projects for all participants. This may enable participants to develop strategies for solutions under their authority.
Developing a Resilience Planning Process
In this activity, you will develop a country-specific plan to assess power system vulnerabilities and develop a resilience strategy.
Training Materials
Power Sector Resilience Solutions
These slides are intended to provide additional background information on the entire power sector resilience planning process, including examples of solutions and how to prioritize them. They can serve simply as a reference or can be used in local power sector resilience assessment workshops.
Data and Tools
The REopt™ techno-economic decision support model is used to optimize energy systems for buildings, campuses, communities, and microgrids. REopt recommends an optimal mix of renewable energy, conventional generation, and energy storage technologies to meet cost savings and energy performance goals.
Renewable Energy Data Explorer
The RE Data Explorer is a user-friendly geospatial analysis tool for analyzing renewable energy potential and informing decisions. Developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), RE Data Explorer performs visualization and analysis of renewable energy potential that can be customized for different scenarios. RE Data Explorer can support prospecting, integrated planning, policymaking, and other decision-making activities to accelerate renewable energy deployment.
HOMER (Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources) Pro is a tool for optimizing microgrid design in all sectors, from village power and island utilities to grid-connected campuses and military bases. HOMER Grid can be used for optimizing the value of behind-the-meter, solar-plus-storage and hybrid distributed generation systems, especially when demand charges and energy arbitrage matter.
Publications and Case Studies
Planning a Resilient Power Sector
The provision of reliable, secure, and affordable electricity is essential to power economic growth and development. The power system is at risk from an array of natural, technological, and man-made threats that can cause everything from power interruption to chronic undersupply. It is critical for policymakers, planners, and system operators to safeguard their systems and plan for and invest in the improved resilience of the power sector in their countries. Through holistic resilience planning, actors can anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to the threats and stresses on the power system. Resilience planning identifies the threats, impacts, and vulnerabilities to the power system, and devises strategies to mitigate them.
Power Sector Resilience Technical Solutions
Clean energy technical solutions can enhance resilience across the grid system to help provide more reliable and resilient power to end users. Several cutting-edge technologies and approaches are enabling countries to better prepare for and address threats to the power system. This fact sheet provides an overview of
key technical solutions to support power sector resilience.
Mini-Grids and Climate Resilience
Reliable and affordable energy can drive economic growth, development, and improved health and security. Yet communities in remote locations often lack access to energy service, hampering their ability to develop. Mini-grid systems can often help solve this problem. Mini-grids provide electric power generation, storage, and distribution, and often harness renewable energy from solar, wind, hydro, biomass, and biogas. Mini-grids are sometimes connected to the main grid, but they are also implemented in communities that are separated from central power grids along the “last mile". Ultimately, mini-grids provide low-emission and resilient power systems that promote power reliability, increased income, and improved communications and access to information for the communities they serve.
Integrated Resource and Resilience Planning - forthcoming
Various threats—natural, technological, and human-caused—can compromise the safety, reliability, and affordability of power delivery. Among these threats is climate change, which can affect power generation, transmission, distribution, and the ability to meet demand by driving changes in rainfall amount and distribution; rising temperatures and more intense heatwaves; sea level rise and storm surge; more frequent large wildfires; more frequent and intense droughts; and related hazards, such as flooding and landslides. As the climate warms throughout the century, these stressors are expected to continue to intensify. As a result, it is in power providers’ interest to consider potential climate impacts when undertaking long-term power system investment planning.
Solar Photovoltaic Systems in Hurricanes and Other Severe Weather
Field examinations of hurricane damaged photovoltaic systems have revealed important design, construction, and operational factors that greatly influence a system’s survivability from a severe weather event. This fact sheet provides an overview of recommended design specifications for increased system survivability identified from these recent hurricanes. Many of these factors can apply to other severe weather events, such as tornadoes.
The 2017 hurricane season was one of the most active in history. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria brought widespread destruction throughout the Caribbean. In addition to the emotional toll these severe storms had on people in the region, the disruption of critical infrastructure left many communities without basic services such as electricity and water for prolonged periods of time. On some islands, such as Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Barbuda, solar photovoltaic (PV) systems suffered major damage or even complete failure. However, other solar PV systems, such as ones installed in the British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, and St. Eustatius, survived and continued producing power the following day. This report, from Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), discusses the root causes of PV system failures from hurricanes and describes recommendations for building more resilient solar PV power plants.
Distributed Solar PV for Electricity System Resiliency: Policy and Regulatory Considerations
This paper specifies the goals of power resiliency and explains the reasons that most distributed PV systems as installed today are technically incapable of providing consumer power during a grid outage. It presents the basics of designing distributed PV systems for resiliency, including the use of energy storage, hybrid fuel-use and microgrids. The paper concludes with policy and regulatory considerations for encouraging the use of these distributed system designs.
Energy Security on a Barrier Island, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
In 2008, Hurricane Ike left Galveston flooded, leading to an evacuation, damaged infrastructure, and leaving the hospital inoperable for 90 days. To avoid this downtime in the future the hospital undertook a series of steps that included converting buildings to hot water heat, distributing heating steam overhead (rather than underground) to research buildings, elevating boilers and chillers, installing flood walls, and producing electricity onsite via combined heat and power (CHP). As a result, when Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017, the hospital suffered no major damage or outages.
Demonstration of the Energy Component of the Installation Master Plan Using the “Net Zero Energy Planner” Tool ,Zhivov et al.
The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) has developed an energy master planning (EMP) concept and the automated Net Zero Planner tool to support U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) energy policy. The energy concept minimizes energy use at the building level, improves the efficiency of energy conversion and distribution, and uses energy from renewable sources to balance fossil fuel based energy to achieve a net zero fossil fuel energy status. The objective of this project was to demonstrate a holistic energy EMP concept and NZP at two defense installations, the U.S. Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, NY and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (PNSY), Kittery, ME.
Large-scale solar district heating plants in Danish smart thermal grid: Developments and recent trends, Tian et al.
This study reviews the development of large solar district heating plants in Denmark since 2006. Large solar collector fields are very popular in district heating systems in Denmark, even though the solar radiation source is not favorable at high latitudes compared to many other regions. Denmark is not only the biggest country in both total installed capacities and numbers of large solar district heating plants, but also is the first and only country with commercial market-driven solar district heating plants.
This study investigates the key success factors enabling development of high quality, efficient and low carbon district heating and cooling systems, discusses how these factors can be replicated in the EU and provides a better view on the role and features of these systems, as well as a few potential policy guidelines to support their deployment. The eight case studies presented in this report are at least partly replicable, and cover a wide range of technologies, energy sources, management modes and types of distributed heating and cooling systems.
Gram, Denmark district heating system schematic
Gram, Denmark has implemented a district heating system that incorporates solar thermal collectors, solar photovoltaics, gas engines, gas and electric boilers, combined heat and power, and a thermal storage tank to provide district heating and electricity for their community.
Making the energy sector more resilient to climate change
The energy sector faces multiple threats from climate change, in particular from extreme weather events and increasing stress on water resources. Greater resilience to climate change impacts will be essential to the technical viability of the energy sector and its ability to cost-effectively meet the rising energy demands driven by global economic and population growth. Energy sector stakeholders, including governments, regulators, utilities/energy companies and financial institutions (banks, insurers, investors), will need to define climate change resilience and adaptation challenges and identify actions needed to address these challenges.
Energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy (RE) technical solutions described in this paper can bridge action across climate change mitigation and resilience through reducing GHG emissions and supporting electric power sector adaptation to increasing climate risk. Integrated planning approaches, also highlighted in this paper, play an integral role in bringing together mitigation and resilience action under broader frameworks. Through supporting EE and RE deployment and integrated planning approaches, unique to specific national and local circumstances, countries can design and implement policies, strategies, and sectoral plans that unite development priorities, climate change mitigation, and resilience.
Distributed Generation to Support Development-Focused Climate Action
This paper explores the role of DG, with a high renewable energy contribution, in supporting low emission climate resilient development. The paper presents potential impacts on development (via energy access), greenhouse gas (GHG) emission mitigation, and climate resilience directly associated with DG, as well as specific actions that may enhance or increase the likelihood of climate and development benefits. This paper also seeks to provide practical and timely insights to support DG policymaking and planning within the context of common climate and development goals as the DG landscape rapidly evolves globally. Country-specific DG policy and program examples, as well as analytical tools that can inform efforts internationally, are also highlighted throughout the paper.
Microgrid-Ready Solar PV - Planning for Resiliency
This fact sheet provides background information on microgrids with suggested language for several up-front considerations that can be added to a solar
project procurement or request for proposal (RFP) that will help ensure that PV systems are built for future microgrid connection.
Distributed Solar PV for Electricity System Resiliency: Policy and Regulatory Considerations
This paper specifies the goals of power resiliency and explains the reasons that most distributed PV systems as installed today are technically incapable of providing consumer power during a grid outage. It presents the basics of designing distributed PV systems for resiliency, including the
use of energy storage, hybrid fuel-use and microgrids. The paper concludes with policy and regulatory considerations for encouraging the use of these distributed system designs.
Getting Wind and Solar onto the Grid
This recently released report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) provides a comprehensive review and clarification of the challenges and solutions for integrating grid-connected wind and solar energy.
Build Back Better: Reimagining and Strengthening the Power Grid of Puerto Rico
Hurricane Irma struck Puerto Rico's northern coastline on September 6 and 7, 2017 as a Category 5 storm, knocking out power to more than one million residents and critical infrastructure. Two weeks later, on September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria made its way up the Caribbean as a Category 4 hurricane, bringing winds of 150+ mph and dumping 25 inches of rain, resulting in catastrophic damage of historical proportion. The purpose of this report is to provide an assessment of the electric power system storm damage, describe a new system design basis, and propose rebuild recommendations for the Puerto Rico Power and Grid Resiliency rebuild initiative.
A compilation of recent studies, programs, and policies related to storm hardening and resiliency, including measures or undergrounding, vegetation management, higher design and construction standards, smart grids, microgrids, and advanced technologies.
New York City Resilient Solar Roadmap
NYSolar Smart DG Hub, 2017 Sustainable CUNY of the City University of New York (CUNY) formed the NYSolar Smart DG Hub in order to develop the solutions to market barriers and create a Resilient Solar Roadmap for New York City (NYC) that can be emulated across the state. The DG Hub seeks to increase the deployment of resilient solar installations, which can operate during power outages and provide critical and grid support services to New York City.
This report will help managers of city buildings, private building owners and managers, the resilient PV industry, and policymakers to better understand the economic and resiliency benefits of resilient PV. This paper examines the role resilient PV can play in fortifying New York City's building stock for disaster response and recovery while also supporting city greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and relieving stress to the electric grid from growing power demands.
Distributed Energy Planning for Climate Resilience
Climate resilient solutions are being adopted and implemented at various levels of government across the United States and globally. Solutions vary based on predicted hazards, community context, local priorities, complexity, and available resources. Lessons being learned through the implementation process across various levels and types of government can inform resiliency planning in different contexts. Through providing analytical and technical support across the world, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is documenting key lessons related to resilience planning associated with power generation and water distribution. Distributed energy generation is a large factor in developing resilience with clean energy technologies and solutions. The technical and policy solutions associated with distributed energy implementation for resilience fall into a few major categories, including: spatial diversification, microgrids, water-energy nexus, policy, and redundancy.
Case Studies in Power Sector Resilience
Energy Security on a Barrier Island, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
In 2008, Hurricane Ike left Galveston flooded, leading to an evacuation, damaged infrastructure, and leaving the hospital inoperable for 90 days. To avoid this downtime in the future the hospital undertook a series of steps that included converting buildings to hot water heat, distributing heating steam overhead (rather than underground) to research buildings, elevating boilers and chillers, installing flood walls, and producing electricity onsite via combined heat and power (CHP). As a result, when Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017, the hospital suffered no major damage or outages.
