MARVEL Review: Resilient Energy Microgrid Integration Overview
Microgrid presentation to MARVEL design team
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Microgrid presentation to MARVEL design team
There is recognition among power and water utilities that the frequency and magnitude of high consequence and low probability events could increase as a result of climate change. The interconnected nature of energy-water systems raises the possibility of cascading failures, increasing complexity and risks. Resilience and long-term planning are important ways of weathering the effects of climate change. First, to understand more about resilience, we reviewed existing literature on resilience definitions, metrics, and modeling, focusing on integrated water-power systems. Second, to understand how resilience and planning are being applied in practice, we interviewed utilities and organized, curated, and synthesized the interview data to arrive at several key findings, which are presented here. We found that there is not a consistent definition for resilience, yet it is something that utilities regularly plan for, often with different names and varying methods/measures. However, there is a tangible shift in the industry towards defining and determining measurable resilience metrics. While the exact metrics are a work in progress, utilities are taking steps forward by (1) putting people and culture at the center of resilience, (2) recognizing their own interdependencies, and (3) pursuing better cross-sector collaboration.
Here this paper provides a literature review of methods and modeling techniques to estimate the cost of power system outages, along with the value of outage mitigation or system resilience. Regulators, policymakers, and infrastructure owners have a growing need to understand the methods for estimating the benefits of resilience improvements of electric infrastructure against natural and man-made disasters. There is a broad literature that estimates the cost of short-duration outages and a small but developing literature on estimating the cost of long-duration outages. This article reviews the models used to estimate the cost of outages and discusses their relative strengths. Additionally, this paper identifies key questions from stakeholders regarding resilience investment and maps them to the relevant models that would help answer them. We include recommendations for future work to include recent advances in regional economic modeling that can estimate region and demographic-specific costs and the distributional consequences of potential resilience projects.
Natural disasters can lead to large-scale power outages, affecting critical infrastructure and causing social and economic damages. These events are exacerbated by climate change, which increases their frequency and magnitude. Improving power grid resilience can help mitigate the damages caused by these events. Mobile energy storage systems, classified as truck-mounted or towable battery storage systems, have recently been considered to enhance distribution grid resilience by providing localized support to critical loads during an outage. Compared to stationary batteries and other energy storage systems, their mobility provides operational flexibility to support geographically dispersed loads across an outage area. This paper provides a comprehensive and critical review of academic literature on mobile energy storage for power system resilience enhancement. As mobile energy storage is often coupled with mobile emergency generators or electric buses, those technologies are also considered in the review. Allocation of these resources for power grid resilience enhancement requires modeling of both the transportation system constraints and the power grid operational constraints. These aspects are discussed, along with a discussion on the cost–benefit analysis of mobile energy resources. The paper concludes by presenting research gaps, associated challenges, and potential future directions to address these challenges.
Power system resilience has been an emerging hot topic in recent years to investigate the increasing threats of extreme events, such as natural disasters, severe weather, and cyberattacks. Although much research has been done to define, model, and quantify resilience from different aspects, the lack of universally accepted evaluation methods and resilience metrics makes it difficult to assess and compare resilience across different power systems, such as what is typically done in power system reliability studies. In this paper, first, we review the definitions of resilience, and we summarize two core concepts shared by most of the literature. Then, we develop a new framework to assess power system resilience from two perspectives - i.e., pre-event estimation and post-event evaluation - to capture system resilience performance in both general and specific fashions. We conduct a thorough review of existing resilience metrics and categorize them using the proposed framework, where recommendations are also proposed to capture core concepts of resilience.
This research article presents a comprehensive review of resilience in power transmission and distribution systems, focusing on key studies that examine structural integrity, mechanical stress distribution, and system reliability under various conditions. The article synthesizes findings across multiple studies, covering assumptions, system topologies, methodologies, and challenges that affect resilience in these networks. Particular attention is given to identifying studies that address the influence of adjacent spans and tower--line interactions, as these factors play a crucial role in the stress distribution and structural dynamics within poles, towers, and transmission lines. In addition to identifying critical factors contributing to system vulnerability, this review emphasizes the importance of continued research to better understand and mitigate risks from extreme events, such as high winds combined with ice storms. By consolidating knowledge on current challenges and future needs, this work outlines future directions to advance resilience studies and contributes to ongoing efforts to strengthen power transmission and distribution networks, reducing disruptions in electricity supply and improving overall system resilience in an evolving climate landscape.
This report assesses the hazard landscape of the state of Minnesota, identifies weather hazards that are most impactful to the distribution system, includes a statewide assessment of household access to services dependent on reliable power, reviews resilience planning activities of electric utilities in Minnesota, and presents analysis of distribution grid performance in the face of extreme weather events with data from seven electric cooperatives dispersed throughout outstate Minnesota. This information is synthesized to provide considerations for resilience investment prioritization.
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.
Power system resilience is an emerging hot topic in recent years to study the increasing threats of extreme events such as natural disasters, severe weather, and cyberattacks. Although many research works have been done to define, model, and quantify resilience from different aspects, the lack of universally accepted resilience metrics and evaluation methods makes it difficult to assess and compare resilience across different power systems like what is typically done in power system reliability studies. In this paper, we first review the definitions of resilience and summarized two core concepts shared by most literature. On top of that, we conduct a thorough review of resilience metrics and develop a new framework to assess power system resilience from two perspectives, i.e., pre-event estimation and post-event evaluation, to capture system resilience performance in both general and specific fashions. Existing resilience metrics are summarized and categorized using the proposed framework, where recommendations are also proposed to capture core concepts of resilience.
The protection of underground civil infrastructure continues to be a high priority for transportation and transit security agencies. In particular, rail transit tunnels running under bodies of water are susceptible to disruptions due to flooding caused by extraordinary climatic events such as hurricanes or other events resulting from human activities. Several events have taken place in the past decades that have demonstrated the need to mitigate vulnerabilities or, at least, minimize the consequences of catastrophic events. Although it is impossible to prevent all situations that can lead to flooding, damage can be substantially decreased by reducing the area affected by the event. To minimize the effects of an event, a possible approach is to compartmentalize the tunnel system by creating temporary barriers that can contain the propagation of flooding until a more permanent solution can be implemented. One way to create a temporary barrier is by the deployment of a large-scale inflatable structure, also known as an inflatable plug. In such an application, the inflatable structure is prepared for placement, either permanently or temporally, and maintained ready for deployment, inflation, and pressurization when needed. The internal plug pressure imparts a normal force against the tunnel wall surface with the friction between the plug and tunnel surfaces opposing axial movement of the plug. The sealing effectiveness depends on the ability of the inflatable structure to self-deploy and fit, without human intervention, to the intricacies of the perimeter of the conduit being sealed. Primary design constraints include having the plug stowed away from the dynamic envelope of the trains and being able to withhold the pressure of the flooding water. This work presents a compilation of the main aspects of the activities completed for the development of large-scale inflatable structures as part of the Resilient Tunnel Plug (RTP) Project. The main test results and lessons learned are presented to demonstrate the viability of implementing large-scale inflatable plugs for the containment of flooding in rail tunnels systems. Over 400 coupon and specimen tests, 200 reduced scale tests, and 100 full-scale tests were conducted to demonstrate the efficacy of the design of different prototypes over a 10-year research and development project. The culmination of the work was 12 large-scale flooding demonstrations where the inflatable tunnel plug was shown able to be deployed remotely and withstand a simulated flooding event.
The Army recognizes the need for its installations to operate as independently and efficiently as possible with secure energy and water resource that cannot be limited or shut off by external forces or events, whether natural or man-made . In an effort to make this possible, the Army has identified microgrids as an effective way to achieve the goal of secure power for operations, both for domestic and international installations. This document is designed to educate Army Installation leaders about what microgrids are, options for their components, financing, and operations, as well as other regulatory and technological considerations.
The global effects of climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme events such as heatwaves and power outages, which have consequences for buildings and their cooling systems. Buildings and their cooling systems should be designed and operated to be resilient under such events to protect occupants from potentially dangerous indoor thermal conditions. This study performed a critical review on the state-of-the-art of cooling strategies, with special attention to their performance under heatwaves and power outages. We proposed a definition of resilient cooling and described four criteria for resilience—absorptive capacity, adaptive capacity, restorative capacity, and recovery speed —and used them to qualitatively evaluate the resilience of each strategy. The literature review and qualitative analyses show that to attain resilient cooling, the four resilience criteria should be considered in the design phase of a building or during the planning of retrofits. The building and relevant cooling system characteristics should be considered simultaneously to withstand extreme events. A combination of strategies with different resilience capacities, such as a passive envelope strategy coupled with a low-energy space-cooling solution, may be needed to obtain resilient cooling. Finally, a further direction for a quantitative assessment approach has been pointed out.
This fact sheet provides an overview of trends and barriers related to disclosure of climate and resilience performance. It reviews major reporting frameworks for resilience, compares the frameworks, and provides next steps for building owners.
Networked microgrids (NMGs) are clusters of microgrids that are physically connected and functionally interoperable. The massive and unprecedented deployment of smart grid technologies, new business models, and involvement of new stakeholders enable NMGs to be a conceptual operation paradigm for future distribution systems. Much work needs to be done, however, to enable NMGs to achieve seamless coordination, including physical, communication, and functional integration. In this paper, we review and summarize the state-of-the-art methodologies for operation and control of NMGs. Furthermore, we also specifically discuss the notion of dynamic boundaries for advanced microgrid applications. In addition, we introduce the opportunities, challenges, and possible solutions regarding NMGs for improving grid resilience, robustness, and efficiency.
Aging infrastructure, increasing operational complexity, and surging electricity demand from artificial intelligence and electrification are straining the grid and heightening the risks of disruptions, making resilience a critical priority. Energy storage is increasingly deployed to provide critical power supply, fast grid support, and rapid restoration. However, current practice lacks consistent metrics and systematic methodologies to rigorously quantify the resilience benefits of storage. This paper provides a comprehensive review of energy storage in resilience enhancement, focusing on functional roles, quantification metrics, and integration strategies. A structured resilience metrics library is compiled and categorized to encompass both technical and economic performance aspects. Existing methodologies for resilience-oriented storage planning and operations are critically examined. Key technical and practical challenges are identified, and future research directions are outlined to strengthen storage contributions to grid resilience.
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Inertia, the resistance of an ecosystem property to change under stress, is distinguished from resilience, which refers to the degree, manner. and pace of change or recovery in ecosystem properties following disturbance. In turn, these two terms are differentiated from 'stability'. which is used here to refer to the pattern of natural fluctuation in ecosystem properties in the absence of major exogenous disturbance. Four component attributes of resilience are reviewed in the context of Mediterranean-climate examples. The elasticity component concerns the rate of recovery of an ecosystem property following disturbance; amplitude, the threshold of stress beyond which recovery to the initial state does not occur; hysteresis, the degree to which the pattern of recovery after stress differs from that of deterioration under chronic stress, and malleability the ease with which the ecosystem can become permanently altered. Each ecosystem property will typically reveal a different level of resilience to a given stress and stressor. The degree of recovery should not be expected to be complete in any event, due to sample variability and stochastic events. In cyclicallystable ecosystems, the pattern of recovery should be measured in light of this periodicity, and short-term (within-cycle) recovery distinguished from long-term (between-cycle) recovery. The prediction of resilience properties of ecosystems can be approached through a knowledge of the modular structure of foodwebs, through knowledge of the autecological adaptations of key species to the stressor, or through cumulative experience of the response to disturbance at the community level. At present there is much room for investigation of each of these approaches in Mediterranean-climate ecosystems.
Protein ubiquitination is a central regulatory mechanism governing plant growth, development and environmental adaptation. Ubiquitylomic studies have revealed that many enzymes in phenylpropanoid biosynthetic pathways are subject to ubiquitination. Increasing evidence indicates that specific F-box proteins target key enzymes in these pathways, including PAL, CCR, CAD, COMT and peroxidases in the lignin biosynthetic branch, and CHS in the flavonoid biosynthetic branch, thereby promoting their ubiquitination and selective degradation. These F-box proteins act in response to diverse developmental and environmental cues, including cellular carbon status, light quality and intensity, and biotic stresses (e.g., pathogen and insect attack). By regulating the stability and activity of both enzymes and regulatory proteins involved in phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, F-box proteins modulate the accumulation of simple phenolics and lignin polymers, ultimately contributing to plant resilience. This review summarizes recent advances in the characterization of F-box proteins involved in phenylpropanoid metabolism and their regulatory roles in response to biotic and abiotic stresses and identifies key knowledge gaps that limit mechanistic understanding of F-box protein-mediated proteolytic regulation of phenylpropanoid metabolism. In conclusion, insights into ubiquitin-mediated proteolytic control of phenylpropanoid metabolism offer promising avenues for enhancing bioactive phenolic production, advancing biofuel feedstock engineering and improving crop stress tolerance.