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Critical Infrastructure Resilience, Emergency Preparedness, and Cybersecurity

Integrated System Resilience

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.

Resilience activities are coordinated with the Committee on Critical Infrastructure, Committee on Energy Resources and the Environment, and Staff Subcommittee on Electric Reliability and Resilience.

Quick Links

Energy Resilience Reference Guide, February 2023

Defense Energy Resilience Key Resources Guide, October 2022

Supporting FAQs for Commissioners on Defense Energy Resilience Topics, October 2022

Cyber Incident Notification Requirements by State, July 2022

Valuing Resilience for Microgrids: Challenges, Innovative Approaches, and State Needs, February 2022

Federal Funding Opportunities Guidebook, October 2021

Regulatory Considerations for Utility Investments in Defense Energy Resilience, October 2021

NARUC Cybersecurity Manual

Resources

  • Resilience for Regulators 2023 Webinar #1: Future Climate Modeling for Utility System Planning: Key Lessons for State Utility Regulators
    The next installment in a webinar series ‘Resilience for Regulators’ that dives into various topics within the umbrella of energy resilience policy, this webinar featured speakers from ComEd and Argonne National Laboratory on incorporating climate data into utility system modeling to plan future investments. This webinar will explore 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. Recording, Presentations

  • Resilience for Regulators 2023 Webinar #2: Climate Mitigation Strategies for Coastal and Urban Flooding
    The next installment in a webinar series ‘Resilience for Regulators’ that dives into various topics within the umbrella of energy resilience policy, 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 will explore 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 will also explore 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.Recording

  • Resilience for Regulators Webinar #1: Climate Resilience Frameworks to Improve Risk Management: Exploring Lessons Learned from NC, January 2022
    The first in a webinar series ‘Resilience for Regulators’ that dives into various topics within the umbrella of energy resilience policy, this webinar featured speakers from North Carolina who talked about the North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan and highighted their implementation experiences. Recording, PPT

  • Resilience for Regulators Webinar #2: Building Transmission Infrastructure for a Resilient Energy Future, May 2022
    The second in a webinar series ‘Resilience for Regulators’ that dives into various topics within the umbrella of energy resilience policy, this webinar featured speakers from ACORE, DOE, and WIRES on the opportunity for transmission to enhance grid resilience. Recording,

  • Resilience for Regulators Webinar #3: How Important is Energy Storage to Withstand Extreme Weather Events?, September 2022
    The third in NARUC's webinar series ‘Resilience for Regulators’ 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. Recording

  • 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.
  • 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.