The Nation's critical energy infrastructure is diverse and complex, providing essential services that underpin American society. CPI supports state commissions’ efforts to assess risks to the reliability and resilience of critical infrastructure and drive effective action across the planning, preparedness, response, and recovery lifecycle. Learn more.

 

Highlighted Resources

• Mini-Guide on State Agency Coordination During Energy-Related Emergencies

  This mini-guide outlines organizational models that enable effective coordination, describe their benefits, and highlight how some states have overcome challenges that may inhibit successful coordination. State agencies interviewed for this guide include PUCs, SEOs, and state OEMs.

• Crtitical Infrastructure Resource Repository (Access Restricted to Members Only) - Coming Soon

Cyber attacks targeting the energy sector are on the rise, and pose an ever-growing risk to reliability and safety. CPI provides resources, training, and technical assistance to help commissions evaluate cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities and explore regulatory approaches to drive prudent risk reduction efforts. Learn more.

 

Highlighted Resources

• Cybersecurity Manual

  A comprehensive suite of resources to help PUCs gather and evaluate information from utilities about their cybersecurity risk management practices.

• Cybersecurity Glossary

  A compilation of terms used throughout the Cybersecurity Manual, as well as “terms of art” that utilities may use during discussions with PUCs.

The reliability and resilience of the energy system is drawing increasing levels of attention from state regulators. While reliability is a broadly accepted term with well-defined metrics, resilience—the ability of the system to anticipate, absorb, recover from, and adapt to disruptive events, particularly high-impact, low-frequency events—is not yet incorporated into regulatory processes. NARUC is undertaking efforts to support state regulators’ approaches to defining and quantifying the benefits of resilience investments that reduce the likelihood, duration, and impacts of interruptions to electricity service. Learn More.

 

Highlighted Resources

• Advancing Electric System Resilience with Distributed Energy Resources: A Review of State Policies, April 2020

  Utility regulators and other stakeholders need to improve their understanding of resilience and how distributed energy resources can facilitate recovery from disruptions and threats. This report addresses the role of state regulators in electricity system resilience, the relationship of distributed energy resources to resilience, and how states can implement policies to expand DER deployment to improve resilience.

• Advancing Electric System Resilience with Distributed Energy Resources: Key Questions and Resources, April 2020

  As a companion piece to Advancing Electric System Resilience with Distributed Energy Resources: A Review of State Policies, this publication provides a foundation for state public utility commissions to frame how they review proposed utility investments that could offer resilience benefits and includes a list of relevant resources to improve regulators' ability to oversee resilience investments and obtain better outcomes for customers.

• The Value of Resilience for Distributed Energy Resources: An Overview of Current Analytical Practices, April 2019

  Planning for long-duration power interruptions caused by high-impact, low-probability events requires new approaches to power system resilience above and beyond previous hardening efforts. This report examines both regulatory decision-making and non-regulatory cost-benefit analyses to determine if, and how, a value of energy resilience was calculated and applied to proposed investments. Four criteria were used to evaluate the methodologies, including the method’s ease of use, scope of outputs, geographic scalability, and power interruption duration analysis capability. Some of the valuation methodologies examined in the report may be useful in regulatory decision-making; however, none of the methods reviewed met all four criteria for regulator usefulness and usability, and no single method is capable of capturing all regulatory concerns regarding the resilience value of DERs.

As threats to reliable electricity continue to grow, customers, utilities, and governments are looking to distributed energy resources and microgrids as a potential solution. However, microgrids are highly specialized and complex, and lead to questions around ownership and operation, cost allocation, distribution of benefits, siting and configuration, and more. NARUC, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) established a Microgrids State Working Group to improve the ability of states to plan for and develop microgrid projects, regulations, and policies. Learn more

 

Highlighted Resources

• Webinar: Achieving Community Resilience through Microgrids, January 13, 2021

  Improving reliability and resilience is a key driver of microgrid adoption. Community microgrids that provide power to municipally-owned or publicly-accessible buildings can benefit those connected buildings by delivering power and energy services during normal conditions and outages, as well as enable community members who can use the microgrid to access reliable energy during an outage. This webinar will highlight microgrid projects that have successfully provided resilience benefits to surrounding communities during power outages, including public safety power shutoffs. Panelists will address the following questions: What input did the community offer to shape the microgrids; how were those microgrids funded; who owns, operates, and maintains the microgrids; which revenue streams are making those microgrids pay off; and how are resilience services valued?
  Speakers:

  • Mike Gravely, Research Program Manager, California Energy Commission
  • Jana Ganion, Sustainability and Government Affairs Director, Blue Lake Rancheria, California
  • Craig Lewis, Executive Director, Clean Coalition