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.
NARUC staff experts who support these activities include:
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NARUC Resilience Framework, February 2025
This Framework provides state utility commissions and other key stakeholders with a structured approach to considering policies and programs that will enhance grid resilience amid evolving technological, environmental, and economic challenges. It consolidates insights from nationwide workshops and peer discussions into six actionable components: (1) setting goals and objectives, (2) leveraging use cases, (3) establishing shared definitions, (4) ensuring inclusive process leadership, (5) addressing critical design questions, and (6) guiding implementation.
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State Spotlight on Resilience: The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission’s Wildfire Mitigation Plans, February 2025
This resource discusses the impact of wildfires on the State of Washington and identifies strategies the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission takes to address these impacts.
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State Spotlight on Resilience: The Michigan Public Service Commission and Data Informed Accountability, February 2025
This profile explores how the Michigan Public Service Commission is addressing resilience by improving reliability using data. This includes strengthening accountability in maintaining the electric grid and reducing vulnerabilities that could escalate during extreme events.
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State Spotlight on Resilience: The Florida Public Service Commission and Storm Protection Plans, February 2025
This resource provides a comprehensive profile on the State of Florida's resilience strategies that can be applied to help prevent impacts to the grid that occur with frequent storms that effect the state.
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Grid Resilience Framework FAQ, October 2024
This FAQ outlines essential aspects of the Grid Resilience Framework initiative developed by NARUC, E9, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Grid Deployment Office. Launched in response to growing concerns about grid resilience among regulators and state decision-makers due to increasing disruptions and evolving community needs, this initiative provides valuable guidance to State Energy Offices and public utility commissions on managing resilience investments through comprehensive questions rather than specific regulations. Explore the FAQ to learn more.
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Resilience Planning Training Playlist, March 2024
NARUC, the National Association of State Energy Officials, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory collaborated to provide commissions, state energy offices, and utility consumer advocates with training on resilience planning. Each presentation was recorded and is available for review. You can also review copies of the agenda and presentations.
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Guidebook: Federal Funding Opportunities for Pre- and Post-Disaster Resilience, November 2023
This guidebook helps utility regulators initiate and facilitate an informed conversation about risk-reduction or mitigation projects with their stakeholders. Each section has several educational components, including program summary, eligibility requirements, important deadlines, and key takeaways that tie each program to a utility commission’s priorities. Originally published in 2021, the guidebook has been updated to include new programs from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). For more in-depth information about each grant, utility regulators and stakeholders can look to the additional resources included at the end of each section.
- Energy Resilience Reference Guide
The NARUC Energy Resilience Reference Guide is envisioned as a one-stop primer for state public utility commissions (PUCs) to assist in the development of a shared language, valuation framework, and educational tool on the topic of energy resilience. The resilience of the energy system has increasingly become part of commissions’ regulatory scope so informed decisions are made regarding how to best enhance system resiliency. Several states have already established evaluative resilience criteria (via legislative statute or regulatory directive). This guide will summarize many of the critical topic areas within energy resilience and facilitate adoption of resilience valuation frameworks by which PUCs can weigh investment decisions regarding energy system resiliency. This guide is intended to encourage state PUCs to develop their own frameworks that align with existing resources and to provide topical information related to enhancing system resilience to extreme weather, cyber-attacks, a changing energy landscape, and other threats to critical infrastructure. This guide will also assist in continual assessment of new policies and regulations designed to enhance energy system resilience.
- 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.
- Central Regional Training on Distribution System Planning and Resilience, March 20 to 21, 2024
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, National Association of State Energy Officials, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory invited public utility commissions, state energy offices, and utility consumer advocates to participate in a training on distribution system planning and resilience in Nashville, Tennessee on March 20 and 21, 2024. This was a repeated training with the same content at the November 2023 and January 2024 distribution system planning and resilience trainings
- Western Regional Training on Distribution System Planning and Resilience, January 24 to 25, 2024
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, National Association of State Energy Officials, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory invite Eastern public utility commissions, state energy offices, and utility consumer advocates to participate in a training on distribution system planning and resilience in Irvine, California on January 24 & 25, 2024. This is a repeated training with the same content at the November 2023 distribution system planning and resilience training.
- Eastern Regional Training on Distribution System Planning and Resilience, November 29 to 30, 2023
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, National Association of State Energy Officials, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory hosted Eastern public utility commissions, state energy offices, and utility consumer advocates to participate in a training on distribution system planning and resilience in Washington, D.C., on November 29 – 30, 2023.
- Resilience for Regulators: Exploring Cost Benefit Methodologies on Enhancing Grid Resilience, September 2023
NARUC hosted a webinar exploring approaches for regulators to incorporate cost-benefit analysis into their decision-making adjudication processes for grid resilience investments. The discussion highlighted key aspects such as understanding resilience performance metrics, analyzing risk, and optimizing utility investments strategies to serve utility customers.
- Resilience for Regulators: Advancing Equitable Community Resilience Through Stakeholder Engagement Strategies, June 2023
Energy justice has emerged as a central tenet to utility distribution system planning and federal funding eligibility in the last few years. Public utility commissions across the U.S. have begun the process of implementing energy equity requirements as dictated by state legislative statute or regulation. Both meeting federal requirements for funding eligibility and incorporating equity into distribution system planning broadly require robust stakeholder engagement from impacted energy justice communities. This webinar explored how public utility commissions are developing those equity-driven stakeholder engagement strategies to enhance distribution system resilience. Panelists discussed how state requirements around energy justice have evolved and how impacted communities can make a difference in building a grid that meets the needs of all customers regardless of their circumstances.
- Resilience for Regulators: Climate Mitigation Strategies for Coastal and Urban Flooding, April 2023
This webinar featured speakers from FEMA, the Florida Public Service Commission, and the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities on available federal funding and state public utility commission strategies to mitigate impacts from flooding. Panelists discussed how investor-owned utilities and state policies consider updated climate mitigation strategies, informed by climate modeling analysis or innovative technologies, that can be beneficial to address this specific risk. This webinar also explored different regulatory mechanisms that commissions may consider implementing as an incentive to reduce flooding risk as well as how public utility commissions are assessing climate vulnerabilities in regulated utility proposals.
- Resilience for Regulators: Future Climate Modeling for Utility System Planning: Key Lessons for State Utility Regulators, December 2022
This webinar featured speakers from ComEd and Argonne National Laboratory on incorporating climate data into utility system modeling to plan future investments. This webinar explored how climate modeling frameworks are incorporated into utility investment decision-making within ComEd’s service territory, and how Argonne National Laboratory’s advanced climate modeling can help utilities better understand and address future threats. State utility regulators can gain a better understanding of the types of climate-driven threats to the utilities they regulate, and how investment decisions will need to adapt with the changing climate.
- Resilience for Regulators: Climate Resilience Frameworks to Improve Risk Management: Exploring Lessons Learned from NC, January 2022
This webinar featured speakers from North Carolina who talked about the North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan and highlighted their implementation experiences.
- Resilience for Regulators Webinar: Building Transmission Infrastructure for a Resilient Energy Future, May 2022
This webinar featured speakers from ACORE, DOE, and WIRES on the opportunity for transmission to enhance grid resilience.
- Resilience for Regulators Webinar: How Important is Energy Storage to Withstand Extreme Weather Events? September 2022
This webinar featured speakers from American Clean Power Association, EPRI, and DNV Energy on how energy storage assets can be used to withstand extreme weather events.
- Regulatory Considerations for Utility Investments in Defense Energy Resilience, February 2022
Building on NARUC's recent white paper Regulatory Considerations for Utility Investments in Energy Resilience, this webinar details the concept of defense energy resilience, the Department of Energy’s defense critical electric infrastructure program (DCEI) and opportunities to enhance productive partnerships among state utility regulators, utilities and critical facilities. Speakers highlight the success of existing defense energy resilience projects in Hawaii as an exemplary model for other states to consider.
- Defense Community Priorities on Energy Resilience and Opportunities for State Regulatory Partnership, March 2022
This webinar will feature several defense community leaders describing the strategic priorities of the armed forces and DoD regarding energy security. State public utility regulators should work closely with their regulated utilities and defense community customers to identify critical assets, develop collaborative partnerships, and enhance grid resilience vital to our national defense interests.
- DOE-NARUC Regulating for Resilience Workshop, San Antonio, TX, November 20, 2019
As states, utilities, and other stakeholders seek to reduce the consequences of disruptions to the electric power sector from threats such as severe weather, cyber-attacks, and accidents, the need for regulators to consider how resilience can be properly internalized is coming into sharp focus. States, utilities, municipalities, and customers are increasingly taking steps to improve our communities’ resilience yet are doing so without the benefit of an established, clear and comprehensive set of planning considerations for grid resilience. Objectives for this workshop include: (1) to present and discuss work to date on overcoming critical barriers to development of a structured resilience framework; and (2) to explore commission experiences and needs related to important resilience topics.
- PJM-NARUC Joint Stakeholder Workshop: How Can Distributed Energy Resources Advance System Resilience? Orlando, FL, November 14, 2018
NARUC is grateful for funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Solar Energy Technologies Office and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) through the Solar Energy Innovation Network (SEIN), DOE Office of Electricity, DOE Office of Grid Deployment (GDO), and DOE Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Resilience (CESER) which have enabled the resources and activities described on this webpage.