Utility Resilience as a Service Workshop Briefing

The Utility Resilience-as-a-Service (RaaS) workshop convened by the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) highlighted the emerging trend of utilities partnering with customers to provide resilience offerings.These programs can vary based on target customers, financing structures, rate schedules, and technology types; however, they aim to deliver reliability, capacity, and resilience during extended power outages.

The workshop featured guest speakers from Georgia Power and Xcel Energy and 25 participants from 14 utilities across the U.S. It focused on exploring best practices and lessons learned related to utility resilience partnerships with customers in and designing RaaS programs.

Takeaways include:

• Utility RaaS programs should be technology agnostic, considering various solutions while keeping in mind fuel costs and the need for low cost, low-carbon, long-term resilience.
• Public-use facilities and communities in need of resilience often struggle to monetize additional benefits from microgrids or resilience investments. To make utility RaaS programs successful, the value proposition for customers and utilities should include value streams from peak management and resource capacity, in addition to resilience.
• Larger customers with substantial assets, such as big box retailers, can provide demand response and resource adequacy, forming the foundation for utility RaaS. Larger customers also value power reliability and could benefit from partnering with utilities in a RaaS arrangement as a physical insurance policy. Smaller customers, such as emergency shelters or high school gymnasiums, may be less enticing for utilities due to their lower power demands.
• Large commercial and industrial customers, such as Walmart and other large businesses, present opportunities for utility RaaS programs; however, they also face competition from third-party energy service providers.
• Utilities exploring RaaS should consider state policies related to utility asset ownership, carbon-free mandates, and restrictions on building new fossil fuel generation. Regional fuel cost differences, customer demographics, and hazard threats may also impact the utility RaaS value proposition.

Contributors

Jared Leader, Senior Director, Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA)

Carolyn Dougherty, Senior Analyst, Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA)

Mac Keller, Senior Analyst, Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA)