I

INCREASING THE RESILIENCE

of critical power infrastructures
to high-impact, low-probability
events, such as extreme weather
phenomena driven by climate
change, is of key importance for
keeping the lights on. However,
what does resilience really mean?
Should we build a stronger and bigger grid or a smarter one? This article
discusses a conceptual framework of
power system resilience, its key features,
and potential enhancement measures.

Introduction
The design and operation of critical power
infrastructures around the world has been
traditionally driven by the key reliability
principles of security and adequacy. These
principles allow the infrastructure to deal with
known and credible threats so as to guarantee a
high-quality power supply to end users on a nearly continuous basis, with few interruptions over an extended
time period. It cannot be doubted that this has led to the
development of one of the most reliable (and complex!)
infrastructures of the last century.
However, it is becoming more and more apparent that
further considerations beyond the classical reliabilityoriented view are needed for keeping the lights on. This

The Grid:
Stronger, Bigger,
Smarter?
By Mathaios Panteli and Pierluigi Mancarella
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2015.2397334
Date of publication: 17 April 2015

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1540-7977/152015IEEE

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IMAGE LICENSED BY INGRAM PUBLISHING

is evidenced by several catastrophes that occurred in the last decade or so. For example, the U.S.
northeastern states were struck by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which destroyed over 100,000 primary
electrical wires; in addition, several substation transformers exploded, and numerous substations
were flooded. This led to the disconnection of approximately 7 million people. Over the 20102011
summer, Australias second largest state, Queensland, was affected by widespread flooding that
resulted in significant damage to six zone substations and numerous poles, transformers, and overhead wires. Approximately 150,000 customers experienced power disruptions. In 2008, China was
hit by a severe ice storm, which resulted in the failure of 2,000 substations and in the collapse of
8,500 towers leading to power interruptions in 13 provinces and 170 cities.
These are only a few examples of the effect of weather-driven, high-impact, low-probability
events that a power infrastructure can experience. These events also illustrate that we need to distinguish blackouts from disasters. A blackout occurs when a large proportion of a power grid is
disabled by a combination of unplanned contingencies, resulting in a temporary power interruption.
A reliable and well-designed power system should be capable of minimizing the amount of power
disruption and of recovering very quickly from a blackout. On the other hand, a disaster, which usually includes a blackout, refers to severe and rapidly changing circumstances possibly never before
experienced. A disaster can cause the incapacitation of several and often large parts of a power grid,
which may last for a long period depending on the extent of the disaster. Hence, a power infrastructure that can maintain high levels of performance under any condition should be reliable to the most
common blackouts but also resilient to much less frequent disasters.
Resilience (or resiliency) comes from the Latin word resilio, which literally refers to the ability of an object to rebound or return to its original shape or position after being stressed (e.g., bent,
compressed, or stretched). In the context of power systems, it refers to the ability of a power system
to recover quickly following a disaster or, more generally, to the ability of anticipating extraordinary and high-impact, low-probability events, rapidly recovering from these disruptive events, and
absorbing lessons for adapting its operation and structure for preventing or mitigating the impact of
similar events in the future. Adaptation thus refers to the long-term planning and operational measures taken to reduce the vulnerability to external sudden shocks.
As power engineers, how can we build a network that is both reliable and resilient? The most
obvious way is building a bigger and stronger (more redundant and robust) network. However, how
cost efficient is this approach? A more cost-efficient solution could be investing more into smart
operational measures. But how robust is this approach? More insights into the concept of resilience
can help address this issue.

Conceptualizing Power Systems Resilience

C.S. Holling first defined resilience in 1973 as a measure of the persistence of systems and of
their ability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationships between
populations or state variables. Since this foundational definition, the concept of resilience has
evolved remarkably in several systems, such as safety management, organizational, social-ecological, and economic ones. After Holling, numerous
interpretations of resilience have been developed,
resulting in many different definitions and a lack of a
universal understanding of what resilience really is.
In the context of power systems as critical infrastructures, the picture is even blurrier, as the concept
of resilience has only emerged in the last decade or
so. There have been several attempts by organizations
worldwide in the power and energy engineering communities, such as the U.K. Energy Research Centre
and the U.S. Power Systems Engineering Research
Center, to define resilience and distinguish it from the concept of reliability. According to the U.K.
Cabinet Office, resilience encompasses reliability and it further includes resistance, redundancy,
response, and recovery as key features. Another pioneer definition comes from the Multidisciplinary
and National Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, where a generic resilience framework
has been developed that is applicable to any critical infrastructure, including power systems. This

Presenting a Conceptual
Framework of Power
System Resilience

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Infrastructure
Resilience

Operational Resilience
Robustness/
Resistance
Ro

Resourcefulness/Redundancy/
Adaptive Self-Organization

Response/
Recovery

Robustness/
Resistance

Infrastructure
Recovery

Resilient
State

Rpr

Event
Progress

Rpe

Restorative
State

Postrestoration
State

Postevent Degraded State

to

te

tpe

tr

Time

tpr

tir

tpir

figure 1. A conceptual resilience curve associated with an event.

framework consists of the 4Rs: robustness, redundancy,

resourcefulness, and rapidity.
The list of power system resilience definitions is endless,
but the majority of these definitions focus on the ability to
anticipate, absorb, and rapidly recover from an external,
high-impact, low-probability shock. Although a full comparison is outside the scope of this article, some key resilience characteristics that differentiate it from the concept of
reliability are shown in Table 1.

A Conceptual Resilience Curve

Associated with an Event
The illustrative conceptual resilience curve of Figure 1 shows
the resilience level as a function of time with respect to a disturbance event. This figure demonstrates the key resilience
features that a power system must possess for coping effectively with the evolving conditions associated to an event, for
instance, a heavy storm moving across the system.
table 1. Reliability versus resilience.

60

Reliability

Resilience

High probability, low

impact

Low probability, high impact

Static

Adaptive, ongoing, short and long

term

Evaluates the power

system states

Evaluates the power system states

and transition times between
states

Concerned with
customer interruption
time

Concerned with customer

interruption time and the
infrastructure recovery time

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Before the event occurs at t e a power system must be

robust and resistant to withstand the initial shock. A welldesigned and -operated power system should demonstrate
sufficient resilience (indicated here with R o where R is a
suitable metric associated to the resilience level of the system) to cope with extreme events. The capability of preventive operational flexibility is highly critical here, as it
provides the operators with the assets to configure the system in a resilient state.
Following the event, the system enters the postevent
degraded state, where the resilience of the system is significantly compromised (R pe) . Resourcefulness, redundancy,
and adaptive self-organization are key resilience features at
this stage of the event, as they provide the corrective operational flexibility necessary to adapt to and deal with the
evolving conditions (which possibly were never experienced
before). This helps minimize the impact of the event and
the resilience degradation (i.e., R o R pe) before the restoration procedure is initiated at t r. The system then enters the
restorative state, where it should demonstrate the restorative
capacity necessary for enabling the fast response and recovery to a resilient state as quickly as possible.
Once the restoration is completed, the system enters the
postrestoration state. The postrestoration resilience level R pr
may or may not be as high as the pre-event resilience level
R o , i.e., R pr 1 R o. In particular, while the system may have
recovered from the point of view of fully returning to its preevent operational state (thus showing a certain degree of operational resilience), the infrastructure may take longer to fully
recover (infrastructure resilience), i.e., (t pir t pr) 2 (t pr t r) .
This would depend on the severity of the event as well as on
the resilience features that the power system will demonstrate
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This article discusses a conceptual framework

of power system resilience, its key features, and potential
enhancement measures.

before, during, and after the external shock. It is interesting

to notice how some measures might make the system more
resilient operationally but less resilient from an infrastructure
perspective. For instance, moving an overhead corridor underground might improve the capability of the system to withstand events, but then if the cable is damaged it may take much
longer to repair it than an overhead line. This might become a
critical issue if a new event were to happen relatively soon (for
instance, settling waves following a major earthquake wave).
It is important to highlight that for a full understanding
and assessment of system resilience, which is by definition a multidimensional concept, both the resilience levels
of and the transition times between the power system states
associated with an event are needed. Referring to Figure 1,
the system resilience is not only characterized by the levels
R o, R pe, and R pr associated with different states but also by
the transition time between states (i.e., t pe t e , t pr t r , and
t pir t ir , respectively). In particular, actions to increase resilience should aim at 1) reducing the resilience level degradation during the event (R o R pe) , 2) achieving a relatively
slow and possibly controlled degradation (t pe t e) thus
also mitigating the degree of cascading; and 3) reducing the
recovery time (both from operational point of view, t pr t r
and infrastructure point of view, t pir t pr ). As also indicated
in Table 1, this time dimension
is an important feature that distinguishes resilience from reliability.

A Conceptual Long-Term
Resilience Framework
The resilience definition by the
U.S. National Infrastructure Advisory Council takes the infrastructure resilience framework a step
further, as it additionally considers
the long-term adaptation as a key
feature for achieving resilience.
This feature refers to the ongoing process of resilience building
using the information and experiences from past events to evaluate
existing resilience measures and
regularly update resilience planning and decision making. Figure 2
shows the framework for conceptualizing this infinite procedure of
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Power
System State

evaluating and improving power systems resilience, which is

depicted by the resilience enhancement circle.
The adaptation capacity, which enables the long-term
resilience planning, is thus a critical resilience feature as it
provides the capacity to deal with unforeseeable and continuously changing conditions. As can be seen in Figure 2,
the first step toward this goal is to perform vulnerability and
adaptation studies using the input from past experiences
and/or simulations. This would help detect the vulnerabilities
of a power system at the different stages associated to an
event, i.e., before, during, and after, and develop the adaptation strategies necessary for improving the key resilience
features and enhancing the response of the power system to
the evolving conditions during a similar event that were to
occur in the future.
Based on this analysis, the resilience enhancement
measures are identified and prioritized depending on the
criticality and contribution of each measure for improving
resilience. These may refer to operational and/or reinforcement measures, as will be discussed later in this article.
However, some of these measures are more resilience efficient than others, and some measures are more cost efficient
than others. Therefore, a cost/benefit analysis would help
gain insights on the benefits of implementing each measure

Resilient
State

Degraded
State

Restorative
State

Vulnerability/
Adaptability Studies

Application of
Identify and Prioritize
ResilienceResilience-Enhancement Enhancement Circle Resilience-Enhancement
Measures
Measures

Cost/Benefit Analysis

figure 2. A conceptual long-term resilience framework.

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Resilience Metrics
Before, During, and
After an Event

Adaptation,
Transformation,
Long-Term Planning,
and Decision Making

Short-Term
Metrics

Long-Term
Metrics

Quantifying
Resilience

figure 3. Quantifying short-term and long-term resilience.

over the cost of realizing the measure. Following this analysis, the resilience actions can be ranked and implemented
based on both their resilience- and cost-efficiency indices,
which would help build a power infrastructure that satisfies
both resilience and cost efficiency requirements.
Based on this discussion, it is clear how adaptive management, as a learning procedure that is function of time, is
therefore another concept that distinguishes resilience from
reliability and is necessary for understanding and building
resilience. In fact, the knowledge of a power system and its

main resilience threats is often partial and incomplete, as it

is almost impossible to accurately and precisely predict the
future extreme events that would compromise power system
resilience. In this respect, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change defines adaptive management as a process
of iteratively planning, implementing, and modifying strategies for managing resources in the face of uncertainty and
change. Adaptive management involves adjusting approaches
in response to observations of their effect and changes in the
system brought on by resulting feedback effects and other
variables. The adaptive management approach explicitly
recognizes the presence of uncertainty and allows decisions
to be made and resilience actions to be taken based on new
(and possibly incomplete) information, resulting in an infrastructure with built-in operational and planning flexibility. At
the end of the day, the risk of acting under uncertainty is
always lower than the risk of inaction!
There are several examples of adaptive behavior in power
systems for mitigating the impact of catastrophic events. In the
United Kingdom, for instance, the North Sea storm in December 2013 resulted in the flooding of 2,600 homes, but approximately 800,000 homes had been protected from flooding. By
comparison, a similar event in 1953 led to the loss of 307 lives,
while 30,000 people evacuated their homes and 24,000 properties were seriously damaged.

Quantifying Resilience

Failure Probability

Quantifying resilience is not a straightforward process

(quite the opposite, actually, as it
may prove the most challenging
task within a resilience analysis
framework) because, as discussed
Weather Profile
previously, resilience is a multidimensional, dynamic concept
with several intrinsic complexiFragility Curves
ties. However, quantifying resil1
ience is necessary to evaluate
0.8
the effectiveness of the resilience
strategies and amend them as
Resilience
0.6
Enhancement
necessary. Numerous resilience
metrics exist, but many times they
0.4
quantify only one or a few dimen0.2
sions of resilience. For example,
resilience is often quantified
0
based on the degree of robustness
Intensity of Weather Parameter
to the initial shock, the functionResilience
ality achieved during the event,
Enhancement
or the postevent recovery duraComponents Weathertion. However, a comprehensive
Affected Failure Probabilities
approach for quantifying both the
short-term, i.e., before, during,
and after an event (Figure 1), and
Resilience Assessment
long-term (Figure 2) features of
resilience should be developed to
get a quantitative understanding
figure 4. Evaluating and enhancing resilience to weather events using fragility curves.

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It is becoming more and more apparent that further

considerations beyond the classical reliability-oriented view
are needed for keeping the lights on.

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Boosting the Resilience

of Future Power Systems
The majority of electrical utilities worldwide have recognized the necessity of taking actions to boost grid resilience
to high-impact, low-probability events. These efforts aim
to achieve system adaptation, which refers to the measures
taken to reduce the impact of future events, and system survivability, which refers to the ability to maintain an adequate
functionality during and after the event.
These goals could be achieved through resilience engineering for enhancing the resilience of the network before
and during the event and disaster response and risk management for optimizing the response following the event
(Figure 5), which would be the output of the vulnerability/
adaptation studies based on previous experiences (Figure 2).
These two resilience goals can be fulfilled through hardening

Resilience
Engineering
Resilience
Disaster
Response and
Risk Management

figure 5. Boosting power systems resilience.

High
Effectiveness

of the resilience level of a power system. Both short-term

and long-term resilience metrics are needed accordingly
(Figure 3). In addition, as mentioned earlier, distinction
between operational and infrastructure resilience might have
to be made within the short-term assessment. This would
help establish resilience-building strategies and policies for
coping more effectively with the upcoming disaster and also
for being better prepared for future disasters.
The resilience assessment methods should be capable
of quantifying the frequency and duration of customer
disconnections due to severe disasters and also the number of customers disconnected. They should also provide
global resilience indexes of the entire power infrastructure, as well as area- and component-specific resilience
indices, which would help target resilience enhancement
measures. These resilience assessment methodologies need
to reflect as realistically as possible the effect of a highimpact, low-probability disaster. Finally, time dimension
needs to be incorporated explicitly in the assessment so
as to capture the capability of the system of both slowly
degrading from and fast recovering back to the original preevent state. To do so, the spatial-temporal influence of the
event on the resilience of the power infrastructure needs
to be adequately modeled. If we take the effect of weather
events as an example, Figure 4 demonstrates a procedure
of the infinite building-resilience procedure using the concept of fragility curves. These curves express the failure
probability of power system components as a function of
a weather parameter, e.g., wind speed or rain intensity.
Similar curves can be developed to relate, for example, the
restoration time to the density and duration of the weather
event. By mapping the time-series profile (thus considering
the events intertemporal dimension) of the weather event
at different locations of the power system (thus considering the events interspatial dimension) to these fragility
curves, the components weather-related failure probabilities and the resilience implications can be quantified using
suitable multidimensional metrics (for instance, energy
not supplied, duration of interruptions, and time to full
infrastructure recovery). Following this, as previously discussed, resilience enhancement measures can be applied if
necessary. An example of resilience enhancement is shown
in the fragility curve of Figure 4, in which the components
are made more robust to higher intensities of the weather
event. This procedure needs to be continuously updated for
achieving the desired resilience level.

Hardening/
Reinforcement
Measures

Low
Less
Affordable

Hybrid
Smart/
Operational Measures

Cost

More
Affordable

figure 6. A conceptual comparison of cost versus the

effectiveness of resilience engineering approaches.
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A disaster, which usually includes a blackout,

refers to severe and rapidly changing circumstances possibly
never before experienced.

and operational measures. Hardening measures are denoted

as infrastructure reinforcement actions for making the power
system less susceptible to extreme events. In contrast, operational measures refer to smart control-based actions taken
to provide the assets with control capability and resources
to effectively deal with the emergency as it unfolds. In particular, the goal of the operational measures is to make the
system bend, rather than break, in the face of a disaster.
A cost versus effectiveness evaluation of these measures
can provide the most suitable road map for improving power
systems resilience. The costs of these resilience actions
include capital, operational, and maintenance. Figure 6 illustrates conceptually how hardening measures (also depending on the resilience metric used) might be more effective
than operational ones, but they are also likely to come at a
higher cost. A hybrid approach that allows the development
of a stronger and bigger, but also smarter at the same time,
system might offer the capability to build a more resilient
power infrastructure while optimizing the investment in the
resilience enhancement measures.

Making the Grid Stronger and Bigger

Hardening measures may refer to topology and structural
changes to make the network less vulnerable to severe events.
Table 2 shows examples of these measures, some of which
focus on dealing with extreme weather events. These constitute one of the main threats of power systems resilience,
as discussed earlier, and the uncertainty about the implications of climate change is likely to increase the importance
of weather events within the resilience debate.
Moving transmission and distribution lines underground
is considered one of the most effective measures for reducing the vulnerability to wind damage, lightning, and vegetation contact. However, the cost associated with converting
overhead systems to underground may make the widespread
table 2. Examples of network
and component hardening measures.
Moving distribution and transmission lines underground
Upgrading poles and structures with stronger, more robust
materials
Elevating substations
Relocating facilities to areas less prone to extreme weather
Rerouting transmission lines to areas less affected by
weather
Redundant transmission routes

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use of this measure prohibitive. The cost of burying overhead

wires ranges from US$500,000 to US$2 million per mile. An
additional challenge lies in the restoration time of the buried
cables, which is significantly higher compared to overhead
lines. This is because of the complicated nature of these systems and the inability of the repair crews to visually detect
damaged components. As mentioned earlier, this action may
actually have controversial effects on system resilience, as it
enhances the robustness of the network, on the one hand, but
it affects the response and restoration times following a disaster, on the other hand. Targeted or selective undergrounding
of overhead lines could thus be a more viable solution than
a total conversion, following a proper risk and cost/benefit
analysis. Advanced condition monitoring and fault detections techniques would also help tackle these challenges.
Upgrading the components with stronger materials constitute a further primary hardening strategy aimed at making
the components more robust to extreme weather phenomena,
such as severe winds. For distribution networks, this usually
involves the conversion of wooden poles to concrete, steel,
or any other composite material. For transmission networks,
there are several approaches under consideration worldwide,
including design and material upgrades. In the United Kingdom, for example, National Grid PLC already approved a project of US$1.6 billion for replacing the traditional steel towers
with T-pylons and underground cables while using the existing
rights of way in the southwest of England. The T-pylons are
shorter than traditional towers, have less impact on the environment, and, more importantly, are considered more robust.
Elevating substations, relocating facilities, or rerouting
transmission lines to areas less prone to extreme weather
help provide protection against flood damage and any other
type of damage caused by weather events, for instance,
tower collapses due to extreme winds and snowfalls. Additional transmission lines help increase the transmission network capacity, and they also provide operational flexibility,
as they offer the ability to bypass damaged lines, which contributes to the prevention of cascading failures.

Making the Grid Smarter

As mentioned previously, the term smart here refers to a
broad set of operational actions that can be taken to improve
the observability, controllability, and operational flexibility
of a power system, particularly in response to an extreme
event. This is critical in building resilience as it provides the
system (and system operators) with monitoring and control
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assets for dealing with the unfolding disaster in a timely and

efficient way. A possible set of smart intervention categories
is discussed below.
Distributed Energy Systems
and Decentralized Control

Decentralized energy systems with the large-scale deployment of distributed energy resources (and distributed generation and storage, in particular) and decentralized control can
play a key role in providing resilience to external shocks. In
fact, generating, storing, and controlling energy locally without the need for long transmission lines can make the network
less vulnerable to disasters and the response to an emergency
much faster and more efficient. Restoration times can also
be improved in smaller balancing areas. Localized protection and control assets, however, are required for achieving a
more resilient decentralized operation, which is to be considered in the wider picture of the smart grid evolution.
Microgrids

A microgrid can be simply defined as the subset of the grid

(typically at low-voltage and medium-voltage levels) that can
be islanded and still supply, in a controlled coordinated way,
all or part of its customers during emergencies, thus intrinsically enhancing system resilience. A microgrid requires the
smart technologies mentioned above to continue delivering
power to the customers in islanded mode. Several projects
worldwide aim to develop microgrids, as they are seen as one
of the most promising measures for enhancing future power
systems resilience during emergencies.
Adaptive Wide-Area Protection and Control Schemes

The majority of the existing wide-area protection and control

schemes are event based, which means that they will operate once the predetermined criteria are fulfilled. For instance,
they usually follow the logic of if A AND B is true, then
apply C, where A and B are the electrical events that the
scheme is designed to provide protection against and C is
the protection and control actions to be implemented. These
schemes have been very effective in maintaining a high level
of security even during stressed conditions. However, the
increasing complexity of power systems and uncertainty
in the events that might occur call for the development of
smarter, more adaptive protection schemes capable of adapting to the evolving system conditions and dynamically determine the best course of actions based on the unfolding events,
and not on predetermined criteria. Nevertheless, adaptive
protections have not been widely implemented yet due to
concerns about the reliability of these schemes themselves.
It has to be kept in mind, though, that the use of these
wide-area protection schemes does not eliminate completely the need for transmission network expansion, which
might be ultimately needed for coping with future operational challenges. In the United Kingdom, for example, an
operational intertripping scheme is in place for controlling
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the Anglo-Scottish interconnector, but National Grid PLC

(within its strategic wider works) plans to build submarine
high-voltage dc links for connecting Scotland to England, as
this is considered necessary for the resilience of the future
U.K. transmission network. This practical example points to
the direction that hybrid measure might be consider optimal to improve resilience.
Advanced Visualization
and Situation Awareness Systems

Electrical utilities often have a set of incomplete information on the state of their own network, resulting in delayed
and inefficient responses. The development of adequate situation awareness tools that enables the effective and timely
decision-making could thus play a key role in preserving
resilience during emergencies. For instance, user-friendly
visualization technologies including color contours, animated
arrows, dynamically sized pie-charts, and three-dimensional
representation of the power system could enable transmission and distribution operators to perform more effective system monitoring and develop adequate cognition of evolving
conditions during extreme events. In addition, the reliability
and functionality of the relevant communication and information systems is critical to enable an effective information
exchange and coordination between system operators and
field/repair crews. It can thus be seen that human resilience
also plays a key role in preserving power system resilience.
Disaster Response and Risk Management

These smart and operational measures can improve the

emergency and preparedness procedures that enhance
disaster response and risk management. This helps mitigate
resilience degradation during the event (i.e., R o R pe, see
Figure 1), which is critically important in enabling fast
recovery and restoration.
This response of the system to a disaster is an additional
resilience feature that distinguishes it from reliability, as the
focus is not only on impact on customers (e.g., evaluating
the duration of interruptions or the energy not supplied) but
also on the infrastructure being able to rapidly and effectively recover to its predisaster operational state. A resilient
network should be able to achieve a resilience level that is
close or equal to R o (see Figure 1) as quickly as possible following the disaster by possessing adequate operational and
infrastructure resilience features. In this respect, recovering
from a state of degraded performance and resilience ( R pe,
see Figure 1) requires an effective postdisaster restoration
process. This should describe how the system can bounce
back to a state similar to the predisaster functionality.
There are two aspects that drive the development of this
procedure: the time required to restore each of the damaged
components and the criticality of each component in restoring resilience. The former is strongly related to the infrastructure
resilience and depends on several factors, such as availability of
backup components, accessibility to the affected areas, and the
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number and location of repair crews. The latter refers to the contribution of each component to restoring operational resilience
under different operational scenarios. However, the influence of
these two aspects on decision making is not independent, but it
is in contrast strongly correlated. For example, if a component is
ranked first of the most critical components in restoring operational resilience, but under specific circumstances it may be very
difficult or lengthy to restore, then it might not be highly ranked
in the priority list. Other components, possibly less operationally critical, may be restored first.

Hybrid Grids: Stronger, Bigger, Smarter

It can be clearly seen that understanding and enhancing grid
resilience is still an open challenge. Hardening/reinforcement schemes may come at a significantly higher cost than
the smart/operational measures. On the other hand, operational measures without sufficient strengthening of the network may not be enough for keeping the lights on in the
face of a disaster. In addition, some of these actions, such as
moving overhead lines underground or making use of adaptive protections that may not be sufficiently reliable, may
have controversial effects on the key features of resilience.
A hybrid network might be the solution for boosting the
resilience of future power systems in an economically feasible way. The term hybrid can be interpreted here in two
different, but related, ways. The first refers to the combination of hardening and smart measures for meeting the resilience and cost-efficiency targets. The second refers to the
coexistence of large, interconnected traditional grids (with
centralized control) and smaller balancing areas (with distributed and decentralized control) that could be operated as
microgrids if needed. Such a hybrid system would offer the
advantages of both bigger and more robust networks as well
as more operational flexibility and security.

Conclusions
Building a power infrastructure that is reliable to known and
credible threats, but also resilient to the high-impact low-probability events, is very challenging. To achieve this, we need first
to have a good understanding of what resilience is. Resilience is
not a static concept, but it is a dynamic, ongoing procedure for
adapting (and possibly transforming) the structure and operation
of power systems to be better prepared to external, unforeseeable shocks. A resilient network must thus be robust and operationally flexible but must also possess the adaptation capacity
to plan, facilitate, and implement the actions and measures
required for preparing to similar or new events in the future.
In general, reinforcing the network (i.e., making it bigger or
stronger) may not always have the desired effect, while it usually requires a significant investment. A hybrid network with
built-in synergy between hardening and smart measures is
thus likely to achieve a good tradeoff between resilience and
cost efficiency. This needs to be assessed through cost/benefit
analysis that compares different potential resilience measures

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and risk-based approaches. In this respect, from this work several research questions emerge that are only now starting to be
addressed, including how smart grid measures can cost effectively and reliably enhance resilience when compared to hardening and reinforcement actions, what metrics should be used to
assess the multiple dimensions of resilience, and what type of
tools are appropriate to make resilience-related, cost-effective
decisions taking into account the relevant uncertainties and risks.

Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Resilient Electricity Networks for Great Britain (RESNET) project, which is funded
by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
(EPSRC), United Kingdom.

For Further Reading

M. Panteli and P. Mancarella, Modelling and evaluating
the resilience of critical electrical power infrastructure to
extreme weather events, IEEE Syst. J., pp. 110, 2015, doi:
10.1109/JSYST.2015.2389272.
M. Panteli and P. Mancarella, Influence of extreme
weather and climate change on the resilience of power systems: Impacts and possible mitigation strategies, Electric
Power Syst. Res., to be published.
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Biographies
Mathaios Panteli is with The University of Manchester,
United Kingdom.
Pierluigi Mancarella is with The University of Manchester, United Kingdom.
p&e


may/june 2015