Analyzing Investment Strategies for Power System Resilience

Extreme weather and other high impact low probability (HILP) events are occurring more frequently with increased severity on electric power systems. Even systems adequately designed to meet acceptable reliability standards are experiencing costly sustained outages due to HILP events. It is desired that power systems be resilient against such events. The engineering knowledge on power system resiliency is at an early stage, and considerable work is needed to achieve widely accepted standards, metrics, and guidelines for implementation. This paper presents a review of contributions made by researchers on resiliency models, evaluation methods and metrics, and analyzes the importance of power system resiliency in comparison to system reliability needs. The paper also investigates various strategies for resiliency improvement and the associated investment costs and presents useful arguments on how value-based resiliency investment can be addressed and implemented for societal benefits.