Executive Summary
This article introduces new metrics and a time-shifting approach to estimate microgrid resilience, particularly for islanded operations after a disruption. It highlights the shortcomings of existing methods that fail to account for uncertainty in disruption timing and proposes a median demand metric as a more reliable assessment tool. The research, supported by NAVFAC, aims to improve microgrid planning for critical infrastructure, including military installations.
Why It Matters
This document is crucial for defense analysts because it provides a method to accurately assess microgrid resilience, directly impacting the energy security and operational continuity of critical military installations during disruptions.
Key Takeaways
- The median demand metric, combined with local or global time-shifting methods, offers the most consistent and least sensitive assessment of microgrid resilience.
Source evidence · PDF page 10
The median demand metric performs the best among our pro-posed metrics when considering both sensitivity and consistencywith respect to the benchmark. Tables I–IV show that it alignswith the demand threshold benchmark in every scenario acrossCases 1–4, with only a negligible difference in Case 5 scenario.
- Existing invulnerability-recovery and average demand metrics often produce overly optimistic or misleading resilience estimates due to their sensitivity to disruption timing and failure to differentiate between high and low demand periods.
Source evidence · PDF page 9
Our experiments show that the invulnerability–recovery metricmay provide a potentially misleading assessment to the decisionmaker.
- Accurate resilience assessment is vital for early-stage microgrid planning, especially for critical infrastructure like national defense installations, to ensure reliable power during outages.
Source evidence · PDF page 11
Our results show that the median demand metric,when used with either the local shift method or the globalshift method, provides the most consistent and least sensitiveassessment of microgrid resilience. This makes it the most usefulapproach for decision makers.
Strategic Relevance
Ensuring reliable power for military bases and critical defense infrastructure is a strategic imperative. This research provides a more robust methodology for designing resilient microgrids, directly contributing to operational readiness and force protection against energy disruptions, whether from natural disasters or malicious attacks.