Closely-located regional microgrids (MGs) can be interconnected to form networked microgrids (NMGs) which are operated collaboratively to achieve certain objectives pertaining to varying spatial and temporal operating conditions. This paper discusses the adaptive formation of NMGs as a strategic and promising initiative toward a more resilient electricity service delivery in critical load regions. The paper points out that MGs are building blocks of an active distribution network (ADN) and NMG operations can be optimized in a dynamic situation to withstand extreme events and restore the normal operation more expeditiously when extensive and prolonged outages are encountered. Multiple illustrative case studies are presented in this paper to demonstrate the role of NMGs in enhancing the ADN resilience in extreme conditions.

This paper reviews the challenges of operating the electric power grid under extreme weather events and presents the impacts of grid enhancement strategies on Puerto Rico and its two islands of Vieques and Culebra. The paper also provides a detailed analysis for enhancing grid operation by devising utility-scale solar farms to form renewable-based microgrids in Vieques and Culebra Islands. It will also consider the grid hardening as the next strategy for upgrading the grid reliability and resilience indices. The paper provides additional analyses on the possible implications of such enhancement projects in substantiating the quest for curbing the Puerto Rico's extreme weather scenarios.

Reliability improvements go well beyond smart grid technologies. They include vegetation control and animal guarding, as well as advanced technologies including reclosers. In Puerto Rico, where the reliability and resiliency challenges have been severe in the aftermath of Hurricanes Maria and Irma in 2017, it is crucial to evaluate all ways to reduce outages. Optimizing system-wide reliability improvement requires employing various measures to entire distribution feeders or portions thereof and deploying centralized systems that enhance distribution system observability and controllability. As an initial step, grid operators typically prioritize their feeders based on reliability metrics or other more complex performance indicators and estimate potential improvements of reliability indices once these measures are in place, enabling benefit cost analysis calculations to justify these investments. The determination of these targets measures considers also the impact to critical facilities and other important lifeline infrastructure. With this in mind, this paper highlights uniqueness and challenges of the power system in Puerto Rico, leading to strategic reliability improvement measures that although universal, have their own adoption challenges and quantifiable impact. A targeted investment is crucial in maximizing the positive impact to all customers in the existing landscape.

Considering the proliferation of distributed energy resources (DERs) in active distribution networks (ADNs) and electric vehicles (EVs) in urban transportation networks (UTNs), it is imperative to coordinate the ADN and UTN for enhancing the power grid operation in normal steady state and extreme conditions. One example of such coordination is the integration of mobile microgrids in ADNs in which mobile DERs would be situated in day-ahead and optimally deployed in real-time to enhance the ADN economics, reliability, resilience, sustainability, and security in a constrained UTN.

Resilience improvements represent major strategic objectives of any critical infrastructure sector, including electric power. Continuous improvement of power system resilience requires a well-thought strategic vision, well-executed action plans, an effective mechanism for allocation of capital and prioritization of resilience investment options under financial constraints. Electric utilities respond to storm events that affects the continuity of power supply. Since resilience investments directly affect the number and duration of outages in the aftermath of an adverse event, the avoided cost of restoration needs to be considered in assessing the cost-benefit of investments. Investments and improvements to the restoration process are complementary to, and at times an alternative to, investment in grid hardening, and for that reason they must be considered as they are directly correlated to the cost and duration of the restoration process. In this paper, we have first outlined a typical utility restoration process and proposed key resilience metrics that can be used to capture the benefits of resilience investments. Following, we have proposed a resilience optimization framework that can potentially enable electric utilities to strategically plan for and efficiently respond to historically low-probability, high-consequence disruptive events that are now happening with increasing frequency. Finally, the paper also introduces a case study that captures the operational investments in improvements to the restoration process.

Cities are critically dependent on energy and the ability to manage environmental challenges. Emerging technology and design concepts provide new opportunities for meeting the needs of residents while contributing to major improvements in local and global environments. Cities are where grid infrastructure and resilience goals meet. Across the world, policymakers at every level are developing and executing plans to meet decarbonization and resilience goals for their residents. As about half of the world’s population is now urban, city leaders are looking for best practices on how to support the increased deployment of clean energy generation, including solar photovoltaics (PVs), while also integrating beneficial electrification to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Utility learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic include valuable lessons about the role of analytics in increasing grid resilience to mitigate high impact, low probability events, including future pandemics and severe weather events brought on by climate change. New insights make a case for using resiliency metrics instead of traditional reliability metrics to direct investments designed to harden the grid. The data also underscores the growing importance of the role of external stakeholders including regulators and the general public in setting priorities as we match the capabilities of an increasingly responsive grid to an increasingly dynamic risk environment. While there are key differences between the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on utility operations and the grid versus the typical impact of weather-related events, a grid that is more resilient to weather-related events also provides resilience during a pandemic. The timeline to a post-pandemic normal is still unknown, but utilities can leverage the economic recovery that will follow the current economic recession to build a more resilient and sustainable grid with the support of analytic tools, models and metrics that enable dynamic grid operations and investment that address immediate and longer term risks.

Energy utilities play a critical role in fostering disaster resilience. Much of the world is increasingly dependent on the availability and reliability of safe and efficient energy. In addition to its importance for industrial, commercial and household functionality, energy provision is increasingly significant in determining health and equity outcomes during a disaster. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, issues of workforce protection and absenteeism are critical for public safety as well as for the continuity of operations for utilities and the businesses that rely upon them. However, COVID-19, and pandemics generally, have rapidly evolving and imperfect evidence available to support rapid and real-time decision making. This article reflects the initial setup and operations of frameworks utilising analytics to support decision making from March through July 2020 for a major US electric utility. These initial strategies have enhanced decision making and provided a foundation for additional integration of the evidence base and use of analytics for anticipated decision support in the coming phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as for future pandemics of unknown aetiology.

Electric utilities across the world are investing in smart city technology, from microgrids to electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure to increase grid resilience and move toward beneficial electrification. Investing in the technology, however, is not enough to ensure the widescale replication and adoption of smart city technologies necessary to achieve decarbonization goals. Commonwealth Edison (ComEd), the electric utility serving over 4 million customers in northern Illinois, including Chicago, is building strategic partnerships in academia to measure the impact of resilience efforts. This paper will explore partnerships ComEd has developed with the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at the Earth Institute of Columbia University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to study the impacts of emerging energy technology for widescale replication worldwide. Electric utilities must go beyond investment in smart grid technology. Studying, sharing, and modelling best practices through strategic partnerships is a necessary part of investment in emerging energy technologies to benefit rate payers and stakeholders.

In April of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) s with Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) to examine the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and support relevant decision-making to facilitate workforce safety and continuity of utility operations in an environment where initial data were scant and variable. Central to this effort was the development of a SEIR (Susceptible, Exposed, Infectious, Removed) model by ComEd. The model was based on the work of Gayane Poghotanyan, and the system of equations was based on the work of Gabriel Goh. Nearly a dozen inputs were monitored (see below) and updated bi-weekly. 1,2 The model projected absen-teeism for the ComEd workforce based on projections from the larger data and trends from 5 counties where the majority of ComEd ’ s workforce resides. Running the model required input parameters collected from an ongoing literature review by NCDP. 3 More than 80 studies from peer reviewed, prepeer reviewed, and nonpeer reviewed sources were analyzed as they were pub-lished between January and August 2020. The lack of definitive information about epidemio-logical

As their population density grows, cities need to consider how to use technology to better serve the environmental, social, and economic well-being of its citizens. Many smart city action plans focus on the foundational and tech-enabled strategies that seek to find solutions to complex issues such as mobility, infrastructure and education. Utilities can play a pivotal role in deploying technologies, processes, and planning in the service of societal impacts to support smart city goals of finding green, sustainable, connected solutions for their residents and businesses. To illustrate, we highlight key projects and programs of an electric utility serving northern Illinois, including Chicago. These projects and programs utilize technology to further societal aims such as promoting STEM learning in the next generation; reinforcing community safety; and investigating micro-transit mobility options.

With the uncertain physical and mental health implications of COVID-19 infection, companies have taken a myriad of actions that aim to reduce the risk of employees contracting the virus, with most grounded in reducing or eliminating in-person interactions. Our preliminary analysis indicates that while there is some data to support modelling absenteeism, there are gaps in the available evidence, requiring the use of assumptions that limit precision and efficacy for decision support. Improved data on time-to-recovery after hospitalization, absenteeism due to family or other household member illness, and mental health's impact on returning to work will support the development of more robust absenteeism models and analytical approaches.

The utilisation of smart streetlights is gaining more attention in urban planning, as it potentially reduces streetlights’ operation and maintenance costs, offers additional benefits in terms of safety, security, efficiency, versatility, and scalability, and sets the stage for further smart city applications. This study provides an extensive overview of state-of-the-art research on smart streetlights from various perspectives, including smart city applications, communications, control strategies, and cybersecurity, with the objective of laying down a foundation for future improvements of smart streetlight systems as well as establishing a basis for comparing existing technologies.

How do politicians learn what their voters want? This article explores how Indian politicians leverage different types of interlocutors in order to develop coherent perspectives of voter wants to support policy and strategy development. It then uses innovative archival data to demonstrate how access to different types of interlocutors made key political developments possible.

The severity and frequency of severe weather events has risen in recent years due to climate change, while cyber-attacks have also become more of a threat as technological advances threaten to outpace cyber security. Stakeholders have recognized the imperative nature of supplying sustainable, resilient power to every community. The power industry, and particularly advanced utilities have been working tirelessly to ensure the resiliency of the power grid, and to lead the transformation into grid of the future. Labs play a particularly important role in this transformation as will enable an accurate and expedited system modeling and analysis. The paper discusses ComEd's efforts, as the largest electric utility in the state of Illinois serving more than 4 million customers, to build and leverage advanced labs in designing the grid of the future.

Distributed energy resources (DERs) provide various benefits to distribution networks, including the enhancement of reliability, resilience, sustainability, security, energy efficiency, and deferral of capacity upgrades, where each benefit should be valued individually. Accordingly, DER valuation which corresponds with its stated objective in a distribution network is viewed as a challenging task in electric power systems. This paper presents a method to calculate the valuable portion of installed DERs regarding their contribution to the network capacity upgrade deferral. The proposed approach will assign priority-based marginal values to existing DER locations in a distribution network and calculates the corresponding DER amounts for the deferral of capacity upgrades, which is based on respective locational marginal values. The proposed method utilizes the DistFlow method for DER valuation that considers branch flow constraints in radial distribution networks. The IEEE 33 and the modified IEEE 123 node distribution networks are studied in which several scenarios are analyzed to demonstrate the merits of the proposed method. The results provide additional insights on distribution networked-constrained DER valuation and demonstrate that the DER valuation can provide an alternative for deferring capacity upgrades economically in a distribution network.

This paper presents part of the work ComEd and Quanta Technology have performed to quantify the locational and temporal value of DER to avoid distribution grid upgrade investments. It focuses on the formulation of a robust and efficient algorithm for DER optimal dispatch on a distribution feeder to mitigate the violation of current and voltage limits using the allocated cost of capacity and locational marginal value of real and reactive DER injection/withdrawal.

Urban environments are playing a major role in modern economies, with more people choosing to move to cities for a better quality of life. In fact, more than half of the human population currently live in cities, and the United Nations estimates the urban population will reach almost 70% of the world's population by 2050. This significant and continuous shift demands a more intelligent and planned...