Proceedings of the
The 33rd European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL 2023)
3 – 8 September 2023, Southampton, UK
Initial Framwork for a Generalized and Quantitative Resilience Evaluation of an Evolving Power Supply System
1Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, Ernst-Mach-Institut, EMI, Germany.
2Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany.
ABSTRACT
Current developments and challenges in the power supply infrastructure in Europe - especially the transition to renewable energies, advancing digitization and the effects of climate change - demand a comprehensive resilience assessment for the whole system. While new vulnerabilities arise due to system evolution, which need to be detected, observed and appropriately treated, the transition also unlocks new methods and abilities to increase the resilience of the power supply system. A resilience assessment can be done by measuring and combining the most relevant system parameters, i.e., performance indicators, to form a resilience metric, where deviations from the optimum directly account for an increased vulnerability (or even damages) of the system under study, i.e. a loss of resilience. Resilience metrics for power grids are extensively discussed in literature. Most of them either focus on a general, qualitative discussion, or concentrate on a single system aspect. The holistic resilience metric for the power supply system developed here, attempts to cover all resilience dimensions on every scale in a quantitative, encompassing way. This metric can account for levels reaching from a local to a supra-regional scale. It is specified to our needs for monitoring an increasingly digitized system and considers aspects arising from a rise in renewable energy. Key Performance Indicators are identified, which distinguish different facets of power supply resilience. Inspecting the KPI evolution in real-time allows an evaluation of the system's performance before, during and after a crisis.
Keywords: Resilience, Resilience metric, Power supply system, Digitization.