Off the Beaten Path: Resiliency and Associated Risk

Large-scale electric grids remain an indispensable critical infrastructure, and the vast majority of people will continue to receive most of their electric energy from such grids for decades to come. The impacts of the loss of a portion of the electric grid range from minor inconveniences for most users when the outage is on a small scale and short lived to potentially catastrophic situations when the blackout covers a large region for a long duration. Since the inception of the first electric grids in the 1880s, much has been done to reduce the likelihood and extent of blackouts. However, they cannot be totally eliminated, and there is usually a tradeoff between reduced blackout risk and increased cost. The focus of this article is on cost-effective ways to reduce this risk and, consequently, improve resiliency.