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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Resilience Analytics for Interdependent Power and Water Distribution Systems

The occurrence of large-scale outages in power distribution systems (PDSs) caused, for instance, by extreme weather events has raised concerns on the cascading impact of the power outages on the resilience of other critical infrastructures, including water distribution systems (WDSs), whose healthy operation highly relies on the availability of power from PDSs. Here, this paper proposes an analytics model for quantifying the interdependence between the resilience of power and water distribution systems. The proposed model first performs spatio-temporal outage analysis on the PDS and WDS to determine the PDS power serving capability and the resulting cascading impact on the WDS water serving capability during the occurrence of disruptions. The resilience interdependence is then determined by a proposed set of six metrics calculated using the power and water serving capability profiles, which trace and quantify the cascading impacts of power outages in the operation of WDSs during the degradation and recovery stages. The proposed analytics model is implemented on the IEEE 33-bus power distribution system supplying power for pumping stations of a 15-node test WDS, considering multiple cases of water storage capacity, single and multiple outage scenarios, and availability of distributed generation. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed metrics track the temporal and spatial interdependence between the resilience of power and water distribution systems, providing a mechanism to identify weak spots, and assess options to enhance the resilience of the critical water infrastructure.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Post Conference Activities for the NCSE 2019 Annual Conference: Sustainable Infrastructure & Resilience

The National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) held its 19th Annual Conference from January 7-10, 2019. The NCSE 2019 Annual Conference: Sustainable Infrastructure & Resilience explored how systems thinking that includes tools, data, and synthesis effectively supports the increasingly urgent need to advance a more resilient, sustainable society. Nearly 600 participants from a range of scientific disciplines and sectors including natural and social science, humanities, engineering, government, business, and civil society attended the conference. Post-conference activities planned through this project were planned to extend the impact of the Annual Conference and were made possible through support from the Department of Energy. These efforts included: 1) developing and producing a research pilot on Energy Systems and Resilient Infrastructure, which advances research focused on the better alignment of education and workforce needs with respect to energy resilience; 2) facilitating dialogue and in-person convenings with the Energy Education Community of Practice across the broader NCSE research community; and 3) designing and hosting a webinar series focused on the role of science in infrastructure and resilience. This report summarizes the outcomes of the proposed activities and additional work made possible by support from the Department of Energy.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Measuring and Valuing Resilience: A Literature Review for the Power Sector

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) partnered with NREL to address some of the key research needs for New York State in advancing power sector resilience. NYSERDA requested a literature review specifically focused on measuring and valuing energy resilience to identify existing work and gaps in research to inform NYSERDA's energy resilience efforts. While the costs of resilience investments are relatively well known, it is also important to adequately convey the benefits of these investments. This often means assigning metrics and estimating the dollar value of potential advantages of resilience enhancements.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Case Study of the City of Reno: Resilience Valuation and Planning for Solar and Storage on Critical Infrastructure

This case study report documents the City of Reno's efforts to quantify the value of resilience and the entrepreneurial ways through which the City approached the questions of what role solar and storage could play in their resilience efforts and how to value and pay for solar-plus-storage systems. It documents how and why the City of Reno came to the specific conclusion to integrate solar and storage into their Public Safety Center retrofit project and apply for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) funding. This report provides an overview for other local governments to draw inspiration from when considering how to prioritize community values and pursue multi-stakeholder dialogue around resilient energy solutions. The City of Reno's experience can serve as a starting point for other communities interested in valuing the resilience benefits of solar and storage.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Securing Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings (GEB) through Cyber Defense and Resilient System (CYDRES)

The DOE CYDRES project is driven by the urgent need to address critical research gaps in the domain of cyber-physical security of smart buildings, including Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings (GEBs). CYDRES, a real-time advanced building resilient platform, aims to enhance the cyber-attack-immune capabilities of buildings through multi-layered prevention, detection, and adaptation mechanisms. CYDRES consists of five key modules: a multi-layer network analyzer, an Automatic Fault Detection, Diagnosis, and Prognosis (AFDDP) framework, an intelligent mode selector, a cyber-resilient control framework, and a situation awareness platform. The Network Analyzer employs a data-driven framework that includes a protocol state learning tool and a CRF (Conditional Random Field) command validator. In Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) testbeds, it achieved 100% detection accuracy with a false alarm rate of 3%, validating its efficacy in identifying selected cyber-attacks. The AFDDP framework leverages pattern matching, PCA (Principal Component Analysis)-based strategies, and a DBN (Dynamic Bayesian Network)-based fault diagnosis approach to pinpoint the causes of physical system abnormalities using Building Automation System (BAS) data. In HIL experiments, the AFDDP module attained a detection accuracy of over 95% with a false alarm rate below 7%. Additionally, the fault detector utilized machine learning (Random Forest) and deep learning (Multi-Layer Perceptron) methods with acoustic sensor data to achieve a 100% fault detection accuracy in Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) equipment. The Mode Selector offered real-time impact analysis, allowing immediate actions to protect BASs in the face of emerging threats. The cyber-resilient control framework included an adaptive Model Predictive Control (MPC) and a measurement compensator, reducing temperature violations by up to 94% and improving the total demand flexibility by up to 70% in HIL experiments. Such HIL experiments covered a cyber-attack case and a physical fault case, showcasing CYDRES’ efficiency in maintaining operational continuity during threats. The situation awareness platform in Grafana enhanced real-time threat detection and response visualization, augmenting the operational awareness for building operators. CYDRES demonstrated high technical effectiveness in various test scenarios, particularly in HIL environments. The project's phased development approach ensured efficient use of resources, highlighting its practical feasibility and readiness for commercialization. By enhancing the security and resilience of building operations, CYDRES represents a significant advance in mitigating risks associated with cyber-physical systems, thereby enhancing public confidence in the safety of modern building infrastructure. Future directions for the project include expanding testing protocols, refining AFDDP methodologies, exploring more comprehensive resilient control strategies, and testing in real commercial buildings.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Strategic Planning for Energy-Resilient Communities

Distributed energy resources (DERs) offer flexibility and community benefits in both blue- and black-sky conditions. Outside of a power disruption, they can provide significant cost savings and reduce grid stress during times of high demand. During a disruption to the central grid, these technologies can meet critical energy needs through the use of battery storage. However, communities must consider many planning and design dimensions and tradeoffs to integrate energy systems that meet financial and resilience goals. This presentation, given at the 2026 State Energy Conference of North Carolina, defines resilience in an energy context, discusses strategies and best practices for planning resilient energy systems and sites, including resilience hubs and microgrids, highlights NLR tools and capabilities for helping communities in this space, and features successful case studies in North Carolina related to energy resilience.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategies that maximize portfolio-wide life cycle cost reduction, resilience, and environmental justice benefits

While strategies to achieve net-zero emissions at an individual site are well understood, new analysis methods are required for organizations seeking to achieve net-zero across multiple facilities, each with concurrent priority goals. At a portfolio level, distinct locations present varied challenges that cannot be addressed through singular solutions, and competing goals can take precedence with the assumption that net-zero emissions strategies deter from energy resilience and cost savings, therefore negatively impacting nearby communities. This study tests these assumptions by analyzing 16 diverse sites (varying in size, climate, and energy use) to identify strategies that reduce emissions and assess the impact these strategies have on life cycle costs, resilience, and communities with environmental justice concerns. Methods were developed to approximate missing information essential to net-zero evaluation. Established methods were augmented to evaluate life cycle costs, resilience, and environmental justice impacts across a set of strategies and accommodate the multi-criteria analyses. Potential benefits from identified strategies were quantified using site characteristics and a set of corresponding metrics. The net-zero analysis found that 11 sites could use on-site strategies to eliminate all but 2% of emissions generated. The remaining emissions can be offset, for instance through sequestration, executed at the portfolio scale. On-site carbon-free energy was found to reduce 51% of emissions across all sites; efficiency reduced 19% of emissions; sequestration 16%; procured carbon-free energy 15%; fuel switching 1.6%; and fleet electrification 1.3%. Building electrification, however, increased emissions by 4.4%. Different strategies also provide cost, resilience, and/or environmental justice benefits—the degree to which varies with individual site conditions. The findings indicate an advantage to considering the strategies as a comprehensive set, which leads to co-benefits, both in the ability to achieve net-zero goals and in advancing other goals. The results present the case for comprehensive advanced planning at the portfolio level to prioritize investments that will balance the minimization of emissions and life cycle cost with the maximization of resilience and environmental justice benefits. The novel methods for evaluation and integration, valuation of benefits, and consideration at the portfolio scale allow organizations to select investments that simultaneously address multiple key priorities.

Net-Zero Emissions↗
DOE OSTI2025

ARM-IRL: Adaptive Resilience Metric Quantification Using Inverse Reinforcement Learning

The resilience of safety-critical systems is gaining importance due to the rise in cyber and physical threats, especially within critical infrastructure. Traditional static resilience metrics may not capture dynamic system states, leading to inaccurate assessments and ineffective responses to cyber threats. This work aims to develop a data-driven, adaptive method for resilience metric learning. We propose a data-driven approach using inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) to learn a single, adaptive resilience metric. The method infers a reward function from expert control actions. Unlike previous approaches using static weights or fuzzy logic, this work applies adversarial inverse reinforcement learning (AIRL), training a generator and discriminator in parallel to learn the reward structure and derive an optimal policy. The proposed approach is evaluated on multiple scenarios: optimal communication network rerouting, power distribution network reconfiguration, and cyber–physical restoration of critical loads using the IEEE 123-bus system. The adaptive, learned resilience metric enables faster critical load restoration in comparison to conventional RL approaches.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Resilience Metrics Framework for Solar Photovoltaics

This presentation was given at the Photovoltaic Specialist Conference (PVSC) 54 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Photovoltaic (PV) systems are routinely exposed to extreme weather, including wind and hail storms. Historically, most systems have proven to be resilient to such events, but some storms have damaged PV systems, leading to physical and financial loss. Storm hardening measures and specific system attributes can reduce this risk. This work introduces a set of resilience metrics and a framework for quantifying, comparing, and predicting PV system resilience. The framework is divided into two parts: 1) predictive, attribute metrics based on site and component characteristics, and 2) impact metrics that assess post-storm performance. Metrics are weighted and aggregated, producing hazard-specific resilience scores. We derive damage functions from storm-impacted PV systems, establishing a baseline against which post-storm performance can be compared. This damage was widely variable across hail and wind intensities, and field hail damage was less than predicted by laboratory tests, suggesting that system features - in addition to storm conditions - influence damage likelihood. Finally, the metrics framework is demonstrated using three case studies of storm damaged PV systems. Although additional data are needed to create attribute specific damage functions and establish metric weights, this study presents a methodology for evaluating PV resilience and contributes new damage functions to the literature.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Improving the Cyber Resiliency and Security Posture of Public Power (Final Report)

The key objective of Improving the Cyber Resiliency and Security Posture of Public Power (Project) was to develop a culture of cyber resiliency and security within the public power community. The relative smaller size and unique structure of community-owned electric utilities can sometimes present challenges in immediate recognition of threats and the escalation of potential incidents. The Project offered targeted education, coordination, capability building, and resources to help the public power community better understand, install, and implement cyber and physical resiliency and security systems. The American Public Power Association (APPA) accelerated efforts to develop resources for and with the public power community to understand and implement resiliency, cybersecurity and cyber-physical solutions, including refining and improving the adoption of advanced control concepts. The Project consisted of four major multi-pronged tasks which included: 1) Advance cyber resiliency and security assessments; 2) Conduct, evaluate, and use the results of onsite vulnerability assessments; 3) Research, evaluate, deploy, and integrate both commercial and pre-commercial security technologies; and 4) Research, evaluate, and implement information sharing mechanisms.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Understanding Resilience Valuation for Energy Systems: An Overview of the NREL-NYSERDA Research Collaboration

Energy resilience has become a national priority as Americans experience more power outages attributed to climate change, extreme weather, and cyber events. Energy system owners and operators recognize that they must prepare differently for outages today than they did in the past. Decision makers at all levels face unique challenges and opportunities in effectively and equitably executing a transition to more resilient power systems. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) recently added resilience to its mission statement. The authority engaged with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in a collaborative effort to: 1) understand options for measuring and valuing resilience investment benefits, and 2) inform how resilience could be operationalized across NYSERDA initiatives and program areas.

ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

A Cyber-Resilience Risk Management Architecture for Distributed Wind

Distributed wind is an electric energy resource segment with strong potential to be deployed in many applications, but special consideration of resilience and cybersecurity is needed to address the unique conditions associated with distributed wind. Distributed wind is a strong candidate to help meet renewable energy and carbon-free energy goals. However, care must be taken as more systems are installed to ensure that the systems are reliable, resilient, and secure. The physical and communications requirements for distributed wind mean that there are unique cybersecurity considerations, but there is little to no existing guidance on best practices for cybersecurity risk management for distributed wind systems specifically. This research develops an architecture for the consideration of cyber risks associated with distributed wind systems. The architecture takes into account the configurations, challenges, and standards for distributed wind to create a risk-focused perspective that considers of threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences, with special emphasis on what sets distributed wind systems apart from other distributed energy resources (DER). We discuss common distributed wind architectures and how they are interconnected to larger power systems. Because cybersecurity cannot exist independently, the cyber-resilience architecture must consider the system holistically. Finally, we discuss the implementation of a risk assessment process that uses the cyber-resilience framework to address challenges specific to distributed wind.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Guest Editorial: Special issue on flexible and resilient urban energy systems

This guest editorial summarizes the topics and the papers selected for the Special Issue on Flexible and Resilient Urban Energy Systems. After rigorous reviewing process, 21 papers are accepted for publication. These 21 accepted papers cover various aspects of urban energy systems and are distributed as following: situational awareness of urban energy systems (2 papers), quantification metrics of flexibility and resilience of urban energy systems (3 papers), vulnerability modeling of urban energy systems under various extreme events (3 papers), planning of flexible and resilient urban energy systems (4 papers), robust and resilient operation and control of urban energy systems (4 papers), recovery and restoration strategy of urban energy systems (2 papers), and coordination and interoperability of interconnected energy systems (3 papers). The Guest Editorial Board hopes this Special Issue can provide a valuable information for future research and advancements in the field of flexible and resilient urban energy systems.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Resilient distribution system leveraging distributed generation and microgrids: a review

With the aging of electricity transmission and distribution infrastructures and increasing intensity of extreme weather events, the aggravated vulnerability of electric distribution systems to extreme weather events has motivated the study of resilient distribution systems. This study presents a review of the state-of-the-art research on distribution grid resilience. First, the definition and quantifying metrics of resilience in the electrical distribution system are summarised. Second, the long-term and short-term measures to enhance the distribution system resilience are discussed. In particular, the recent studies on distributed generation and microgrid-assisted resilience enhancements are reviewed. Finally, recommendations for future research are presented.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2025

A building performance-based approach to determining energy resilience for grocery stores in the event of a power outage

Evaluating progress toward a built environment that is best equipped to serve communities during a regional power outage will require metrics that capture the energy resilience of the unique buildings and businesses most crucial to the well-being of those nearby. We focused on grocery stores as key buildings for which access, and thus energy resilience, is critical during a disaster when power is unavailable. We evaluated the energy resilience of these buildings by offering and testing building-scale metrics that assess business continuity potential during a power outage. Metrics proposed in this study are calculated based on the unique power loads characteristic to grocery stores, primarily refrigeration and maintaining safe indoor environmental conditions. Building simulations based on varying levels of backup power were carried out against occupant safety and comfort parameters to apply these metrics, with additional criteria imposed on grocery stores to capture the inventory and sales loss from food spoilage resulting from a lack of refrigeration power. Findings from this study demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed metrics and methodology to serve as a low-data burden means for stakeholders to evaluate the energy resilience of grocery stores, with greater implications in helping to understand the impact on community-scale energy resilience.

Siegel, Lino Sanchez↗
DOE OSTI2024

The resilience value of residential solar + storage systems in the continental U.S.

Abstract Behind the meter rooftop solar plus storage (PVESS) has the potential to benefit the hosting customers by providing affordability, environmental, and reliability and resilience value. Whereas the bill reduction and environmental benefits of PVESS are well studied, its monetary resilience benefits are less understood. The increasing trend of power interruptions driven by extreme weather events heightens the need to understand these benefits. This study leverages various publicly available datasets to perform a cost benefit analysis of adding to determine the resilience value of PVESS for a typical single family home in each county in the continental U.S. We find that PVESS is very effective to technically mitigate interruptions across the country. However, the monetary benefits in the base case only cover about 14% of battery costs, with no county exceeding 60%. This is somewhat expected, given that PVESS provide other monetary benefits that are not part of this analysis. Through sensitivities, we find that higher frequency of extreme weather events roughly triples the resilience value of PVESS and that higher values of lost load double the same metric. Our sensitivity analysis shows that the benefit cost ratio of PVESS for customers living in areas with higher-than-average frequency of long duration interruptions and value of lost load is already above one even without considering other value streams. We conclude with recommendations that regulators and utilities could implement to enable customers to calculate and capture the resilience value of PVESS more efficiently.

Baik, Sunhee↗
DOE OSTI2024

Probabilistic measures for biological adaptation and resilience

This paper introduces an approach to quantifying ecological resilience in biological systems, particularly focusing on noisy systems responding to episodic disturbances with sudden adaptations. Incorporating concepts from nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, we propose a measure termed “ecological resilience through adaptation,” specifically tailored to noisy, forced systems that undergo physiological adaptation in the face of stressful environmental changes. Randomness plays a key role, accounting for model uncertainty and the inherent variability in the dynamical response among components of biological systems. Our measure of resilience is rooted in the probabilistic description of states within these systems and is defined in terms of the dynamics of the ensemble average of a model-specific observable quantifying success or well-being. Our approach utilizes stochastic linear response theory to compute how the expected success of a system, originally in statistical equilibrium, dynamically changes in response to a environmental perturbation and a subsequent adaptation. Importantly, the resulting mathematical derivations allow for the estimation of resilience in terms of ensemble averages of simulated or experimental data. Finally, through a simple but clear conceptual example, we illustrate how our resilience measure can be interpreted and compared to other existing frameworks in the literature. The methodology is general but inspired by applications in plant systems, with the potential for broader application to complex biological processes.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Towards Resilient Near Real-Time Analysis Workflows in Fusion Energy Science

Nuclear fusion holds the promise of an endless source of energy. Several research experiments across the world and joint modeling and simulation efforts between the nuclear physics and high performance computing communities are actively preparing the operation of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Both experimental reactors and their simulated counterparts generate data that must be analyzed quickly and in a resilient way to support decision making for the configuration of subsequent runs or prevent a catastrophic failure. However, the cost if the traditional techniques used to improve the resilience of analysis workflows, i.e., replicating datasets and computational tasks, becomes prohibitive with explosion of the volume of data produced by modern instruments and simulations. Therefore, we advocate in this paper for an alternate approach based on data reduction and data streaming. The rationale is that by allowing for a reasonable, controlled, and guaranteed loss of accuracy it becomes possible to transfer smaller amounts of data, shorten the execution time of analysis workflows, and lower the cost of replication to increase resilience. We develop our research and development roadmap towards resilient near real-time analysis workflows in fusion energy science and present early results showing that data streaming and data reduction is a promising way to speed up the execution and improve the resilience of analysis workflows.

Suter, Fred↗