Grid Resiliency: Perspectives Across the Power Grid

avril 16, 2025

In today’s changing energy landscape, grid resiliency is a top priority for all power system owners and operators. The ability to absorb disruptions and maintain power is crucial in an increasingly unpredictable world. Ensuring that both new and existing systems are robust and resilient is not just an operational necessity but a critical responsibility for safeguarding essential infrastructure and supporting the communities and industries that rely on it. So, how do we ensure resiliency?

The first step is to understand resiliency perspectives across all aspects of the power system. Some resiliency efforts are the same regardless of grid location and some could not be more different. While megatrends persist, stakeholders can benefit from obtaining a broader knowledge base for what resiliency means for every stakeholder. This integrated approach allows leaders, engineers and technicians alike to develop strategies across the entire grid, rather than isolated sections. To begin the cross-system conversations, we gathered some of TRC’s top technical experts to get their perspective on priorities for resiliency. We hope their expertise inspires best practices for an integrated approach to a stronger power system that meets today’s challenges and is ready to adapt to the future.

Distribution Engineering

Enhancing power distribution resiliency has multiple approaches but begins with a deliberate step towards circuit surveys and facility upgrades, always prioritizing circuits with the highest reliability impact or customer count. Here are some examples:

Underground systems

Replace underground (UG) unjacketed cables with jacketed cable, that is less prone to failure, while increasing circuit capacity to meet rising demand. Jacketed cables are more durable and provide better resistance to moisture and corrosion.

Overhead Systems

Replace obsolete overhead (OH) conductors to maximize reliability and operational efficiency.

Install new lightning arrestors to bring circuits up to the current lightning protection standards.

Replace overloaded distribution transformers according to engineering standards.

Consider distribution automation investments such as automated circuit tie lines which can isolate commercial and industrial loads from residential ones, ensuring minimal disruption.

Wildfire mitigation, including installing covered OH conductors and fire department approved equipment enhances overall system resilience.

Lastly, upgrade poles to steel around key ingress and egress roads fortifies infrastructure against environmental challenges.

« Enhancing power distribution resiliency starts with targeted circuit surveys and facility upgrades, focusing on the highest-impact areas. By upgrading underground and overhead systems, we can improve reliability, reduce failures, and better meet rising demand. »

Joel Mullinax

Vice President, Distribution Engineering

Transmission Engineering

Updating aging transmission infrastructure is crucial for ensuring long-term resiliency. The infrastructure installed in the 1960s and 1970s does not meet today’s standards and requires upgrading. Here are some of the key factors to consider:

Strengthening crossings and addressing wildfire risk have become top priorities, especially as the consequences of infrastructure failures grow more severe. In the past, a fallen transmission tower might not have posted life threatening risk, but today, it can ignite devastating wildfires.

Utilities must carefully evaluate their risk tolerance while prioritizing and upgrading the sections of the grid under their responsibility, regulatory safety requirements might not be enough to satisfy risk tolerances.
Enhance maintenance practices for transmission infrastructure to ensure reliability and prevent failures. Inspections and upkeep should be designed to proactively address potential risks, incorporating advanced techniques and technologies to build resilience and safeguard against catastrophic events.

« Modernizing aging transmission infrastructure is essential to long-term resiliency, especially as wildfire risks and infrastructure demands increase. By strengthening crossings, prioritizing risk mitigation and enhancing maintenance practices, we can better safeguard the grid against catastrophic events. »

Ryan Bliss

Vice President, Transmission Engineering

Intelligent Grid Solutions

Distributed Energy Management Systems (DERMS) can dispatch utility-owned and customer-owned DERS to increase resiliency. Both energy storage and load flexibility have a role to play.

Utility scale batteries can provide backup power for customers in the event of an outage. These batteries can be placed strategically at substations or at the end of the line, far from generation and close to customers.
Electric vehicles can supplement batteries. Electric fleets, such as buses and delivery vehicles can provide vehicle to grid (V2G) and vehicle to building (V2B) directional power to support the needs of the grid.
Smart thermostats, building management systems and other smart technology make customer programs dispatchable. The same technology that helps customers save money can also create powerful grid assets by aggregating many resources together.

« Grid modernization can enhance resiliency by integrating energy storage and other distributed energy resources. DERMS orchestrates utility-scale batteries, EV fleets, and advanced load management systems to provide flexible capacity and other grid services while empowering customers to play an active role in energy reliability. »

Adam Light

Senior Director, Digital Grid Solutions

Power System Studies

Improving grid resiliency from a power system perspective means improving distribution feeder reliability, overhead conductor replacement and/or relocation and addressing lighting arrester spacing.

Distribution Feeder Reliability

Improving distribution feeder reliability starts with identifying the weakest links from performance data.
Perform a cost benefit analysis to prioritize feeders based on average length and frequency of outages from SAIDI/SAIFI.
Review strategic placements of reclosers and fuses to ensure they are set up to isolate faults quickly, protecting customers. Consider new reclosers and updating breaker settings to reduce downtime and keep power flowing.
Increase segmentation on circuits.
Create loop schemes.
Consider replacing fused laterals with cutout mounted reclosers

Overhead Conductors

For overhead conductors, proactively protecting against trees and animal interference helps prevent outages.
In certain areas replacing conductors with stronger insulated cables is the answer.
For other areas, relocating conductors within rights-of-way minimizes the risk of an outage further. This approach helps ensure continuous service, giving operations confidence in the reliability and resilience of their network.
Increasing the frequency of tree trimming, as needed.

Lightning Protection

Lightning protection is another crucial focal point. Evaluating locations of lightening arresters, especially in areas prone to storms, can make a significant difference.
Proper spacing, every 4-5 spans and near key devices like transformers, strengthens the grid’s defense.
With the right approach, the impact of storms can be minimized, providing peace of mind and ensuring reliable service.

« Enhancing grid resiliency requires a strategic focus on feeder reliability, overhead conductor improvements, and optimized lightning protection. By prioritizing weak links, upgrading protection systems, and addressing outage risks, we can build a more robust and reliable power system. »

David Sanchez

Director, Power System Studies

DER / Microgrid

As the overall goal of grid resiliency is to improve the rest of the grid functions during disruptions, DER / Microgrid contributes to this goal by:

Reducing demand and stress on distribution and transmission assets through the localization of power generation to provide generation where energy is needed.
Islanding the microgrid to meet customer energy needs during utility disruption scenarios.
Utilizing multi-pronged approach of DERs to meet unique generation requirements of customer energy needs.
Sophisticated protection and control schemes offer the microgrid automated detection and fault clearing capabilities to maintain stability within the microgrid footprint and multi-level encryption to enhance cybersecurity of communication devices.

This can particularly benefit critical infrastructure such as hospitals, wastewater treatment plants, police / fire stations, communication infrastructure and other critical infrastructures. Other areas that may benefit from a microgrid are mission critical operations such as data centers, research laboratories and command centers.

« DERs and microgrids play a vital role in grid resiliency by localizing power generation, enabling islanding during disruptions, and safeguarding critical infrastructure. Through strategic planning and system studies, we can ensure reliable energy for essential services and mission-critical operations. »

Alex Tang

Associate Director, Efficiency

Substation Engineering

To enhance substation resiliency, three best practices can increase reliability and peace of mind: redundant protection schemes, advanced substation automation systems and routine testing.

Redundant Protection Schemes

Fully redundant design practices ensure that no single point of failure can impact both systems. This is accomplished through use of separate DC systems, physically separated secondary control wiring and independent communication paths.
Redundancy ensures faults are swiftly isolated, protects assets and prevents cascading issues, even during failure of one full protection system.

Advanced Substation Automation Systems

Substation Automation Systems leveraging advanced data acquisition and monitoring of substation assets provide greater visibility to operators and maintenance staff.
Enables rapid response, so you can adapt to unexpected grid changes confidently.

Routine Testing and Data Capture

Prioritize routine testing, digital data collection, and predictive analytics.
Identify and replace faulty equipment sooner, before a disturbance occurs.
This approach extends lifespans of healthy assets while focusing precious resources on mitigating the highest-risk issues.

« Enhancing substation resiliency starts with redundant protection schemes, advanced automation systems, and routine testing. By implementing these best practices, we can safeguard critical assets, adapt to grid changes in real time, and proactively prevent costly disruptions. »

Clyde Custer

Vice President, Substation Engineering

Protection and Controls

System protection plays a crucial role in grid resiliency, as reliable protection is essential for isolating problems that could otherwise cause greater and longer lasting impacts on the system. This can be achieved through several key strategies:

Automation of Protection Evaluation: Automated methods to evaluate protection allow for more efficient and in-depth analysis than is practical with manual calculation methods. This enables more detailed and frequent reviews of protection system reliability, increasing visibility and allowing for prioritized system improvements to address challenges to protection reliability and resiliency.
Asset Health Monitoring: Leveraging advanced features available in modern relays and data acquisition systems to implement asset health monitoring can identify potential failures before they become problems. This proactive approach allows for maintenance or system updates to be carried out before issues impact the system.
Modernizing Distribution Protection: Updating distribution feeder protection to include more reclosers, remotely operated switches, and other intelligent protection and monitoring devices enhances visibility and flexibility. These improvements allow for better sectionalization of problem areas and the implementation of Fault Location, Isolation, and Service Restoration (FLISR) or other automated schemes to minimize the impact of system outages and
maintain maximum service continuity.

“The power system is becoming more complex and is operating differently than in the past, creating new challenges for reliable system protection. By developing tools to automate fault analysis, relay settings calculations, and protection coordination, we gain visibility into these challenges and can proactively address reliability concerns, enhancing overall system resiliency.”

Brandon Davies

Chief Technical Officer, Substation Engineering

Regulatory Compliance Perspective

Regulations tend to have a lagging effect instead of leading. Resiliency does not allow for a reactive posture when it comes to delivering power to customers. Organizations can follow these practices to ensure they stay ahead of the compliance curve:

Conduct preparation drills such as tabletop exercises based on educated predictions of grid occurrences.
Gather decision makers for a simulated event and run through the series of events and decisions to be made.
Stakeholders get the opportunity to determine if they have the capacity, equipment and resources to properly respond to events.
Encourage an organizational culture that understands where improvements can be made and rehearse how they might respond to events.

While extreme weather events are rare, they are happening more often than they did 20 years ago. Therefore, dangerous weather events such as extreme cold weather, hurricanes, or even solar storms are strong contenders to be rehearsed as well to keep minds sharp and people ready. Upon the conclusion of these exercises, lessons learned may result in process improvements and necessary updates to operational procedures.

« From a regulatory compliance perspective, resiliency demands a proactive approach, not a reactive one, especially in the face of extreme weather events. By conducting preparation drills and fostering a culture of readiness, we can ensure stakeholders are equipped to respond effectively to any grid challenges. »

Dwayne Stradford

Director, NERC Compliance

NERC CIP / Security

The grid is under an increasing number of both physical and cyber-attacks; countering these threats requires strategies that can adapt as needed. The traditional approaches from a decade ago leave unmitigated vulnerabilities. From a NERC CIP and security perspective, improving grid resiliency centers on three core priorities: cybersecurity, physical security and culture of compliance.

Cybersecurity

Fortify with robust firewalls, network segmentation and real-time monitoring detect and swiftly respond to potential threats.
Conduct routine vulnerability testing to keep defenses updated, protecting critical systems from constantly evolving cyber risks.

Physical Security

Protecting critical sites, including control centers and substations, with robust perimeter systems, blast and ballistic hardening, modern surveillance/detection systems and access control, is paramount.
Minimize the risks of unauthorized physical and/or virtual access, protecting vital infrastructure through technology and adherence to thorough policies, procedures and regular training.
Plan for and provide rapid response to suspicious activities with in-house staff and first responder agencies.

Strong Regulatory Culture

Ensure NERC CIP standards are met through meticulous documentation, regular selfassessments, audit preparation and continuous employee training.
Build a resilient, security-conscious workforce to meet regulatory requirements adds vital layers of protection to the Bulk Electric System (BES) reinforces a culture of compliance and ultimately enhance grid resilience.

» Resiliency from a NERC CIP and security perspective requires a continuous focus on cyber and physical elements paired with a culture of awareness and preparedness. By enhancing protections around critical assets and promoting a strong security culture across all sectors of an organization, we can enhance the grid’s resiliency from multiple hazards while meeting regulatory standards. »

Sarah Poskanzer

Senior Security and Emergency Planner

Next Steps: TRC Can Help

The energy landscape is evolving more rapidly than ever and keeping up to date with each change is essential to enhance grid resiliency. TRC’s tested practitioners help you navigate each change with the expertise to plan and implement your grid modernization strategy and system upgrades. As a trusted partner to the utility industry for over 50 years, we have the resources and expertise to determine each unique organization’s most effective resiliency strategy.

Partner with experts who understand and resolve your current and future challenges. Contact us today to stay agile and embrace the future of grid resilience.

A notre sujet