Reimagining Resilience: A Framework for Integrating Customer-Sited and Grid-Scale DERs
Research

Reimagining Resilience: A Framework for Integrating Customer-Sited and Grid-Scale DERs

  • Navigate the diverse perspectives of utilities, communities, and customers in planning DER projects for increased resilience.
  • Learn how to identify and evaluate distributed energy resources (DERs) as a key tool in the energy resilience toolbox.
  • Explore a menu of DER applications for resilience, including customer-sited and grid-scale solutions and differing ownership and operation structures.
  • Follow a replicable step-by-step framework for DERs to align diverse stakeholder perspectives and goals to design and implement win-win projects, pilots, and programs.
  • Overview of DER ownership and financing models to secure partnerships and funding for resilience initiatives

SEPA’s Reimagining Resilience: A Framework for Integrating Customer-Sited and Grid-Scale DERs provides utility customers, utilities, communities, government agencies and other industry stakeholders with a structure to guide and implement DER-based resilience solutions from planning to implementation. This framework identifies clear steps and best practices to engage project stakeholders, identify optimal DER resilience solutions and business models, and implement those solutions locally.

For more information on the role of distribution system resilience in the clean energy transition, download SEPA’s complementary resource, the “SEPA Resilience Playbook for States and Utilities”.

In 2021, the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) developed the Microgrid Design Framework to provide the industry with a 10 step process for resilience-focused microgrid design. The 2021 framework sought to break communication silos down utilities and third-parties to improve microgrid project success and support the industry in addressing community resilience to natural hazard risks via microgrid deployment. Recognizing that the 2021 framework does not capture the full landscape of stakeholders, solutions, and business models for successfully improving resilience for utility customers and communities, this update builds on that framework and SEPA’s experience working directly with state energy offices, utilities, critical facility operators, and community stakeholders across the country. This framework provides an adaptable structure for coordinating engagement with broader groups of resilience project stakeholders to identify appropriate resilience solutions to meet the needs of a site or community.

Authors:


Weston Dengler, Senior Analyst, Research & Industry Strategy
Jared Leader, Senior Director, Resilience

Reimagining Resilience: A Framework for Integrating Customer-Sited and Grid-Scale DERs