Executive summary
Resiliency improvement is becoming an ever more important topic for the power distribution sector. For the purpose of this policy brief, we have used the IEEE definition of resilience: the capability of electric power distribution systems to deliver electric energy to end-use customers by avoiding interruptions and/or recovering this capability following exposure to naturally occurring high impact low frequency events.
The modernization of distribution grids – replacing ageing assets, increasing their robustness, rising meshing and redundancy levels, redesigning the networks for enhanced reliability and resiliency, fostering the digitalization of distribution grids, creating digital twins, developing artificial intelligence tools, fostering automation and deploying smartgrids, are creating new tools to enhance resiliency.
Reliability, measured through aggregate annual indices, captures only steady-state performance. These metrics were not meant to measure a system’s ability to anticipate, withstand, adapt to, and recover from high-impact, low-probability events.