Defining Resilience in the Utility Industry

What exactly is “resilience”?  Does it mean the same thing as reliability?  This is a question that few people within the utility industry can answer, as there seems to be a lot of misconceptions around the correct definition of the term.

Why the Concept of Resilience Remains Ambiguous

Part of the ongoing confusion stems from the fact that the word has only come to the forefront of awareness in the last decade or so, and especially in the last couple of years as fears of power system hacking have become more prominent.  In 2018, these fears prompted US Energy Secretary Rick Perry to urge FERC to craft policies aimed at improving the resilience of power generation sources in the name of national security.

FERC ultimately followed Perry’s petition and has taken action to examine the resilience of the wholesale electricity market, but the regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) responsible for providing the data needed to gauge resilience seemed confused over what to measure. 

FERC defines it as “the ability to withstand and reduce the magnitude and/or duration of disruptive events, which includes the capability to anticipate, absorb, adapt to, and/or rapidly recover from such an event.”  But PJM has recently countered with a revised version of this definition.  The bottom line is that at this point, the definition of resilience is not well understood.

This obviously makes it difficult if not impossible to measure and optimize it.  It seems clear that the prospect of shutting down coal and retiring nuclear power plants could have an impact on resilience, but again, without a clear definition of the term, it’s a difficult proposition to assess. 

If we don’t know how to define, measure, or ensure resilience, any effort to improve it would be akin to driving blindfolded.  Therefore, it’s imperative for industry and regulatory players to meet about this and come to a consensus on what exactly it is, as quickly as possible.