Exploring the Integration of Community Vulnerability into Grid Resilience Strategies

DESCRIPTION: New technologies are providing important options towards simultaneously decarbonizing the electric grid, while also building resilience with distributed generation resources throughout communities. And while current approaches are adapting to increased knowledge of community vulnerabilities, there remains tremendous opportunity to further integrate the new and emerging evidence to optimize strategies at the intersection of grid and community resilience.

ComEd has been at the forefront of deepening the understanding of the relationship between the grid and the communities for whom it serves as a lifeline. As part of their efforts, ComEd has had an extensive partnership with the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at the Columbia Climate School. This has included developing grid resilience thought leadership products, testing community resilience and grid innovations through community-involved simulations, and developing new models for valuing resilience in these contexts.

Most recently, NCDP has been engaged in a project to develop a balanced scorecard approach to understanding community vulnerability and outage impacts. This process has the potential to enhance the resilience impact of ComEd’s operations in its service territory. This is occurring at a time when ComEd is also working on its forward- looking grid plan, as well as additional efforts it can take to aid communities in the event of storm related outages.