A review of examples and opportunities to quantify the grid reliability and resilience impacts of energy efficiency

Grid reliability and resilience are foundational to meeting electricity needs and have significant economic and societal impacts. Energy efficiency can help meet grid reliability objectives and improve resilience, but metrics and methods used today may not fully recognize these benefits. This paper explains how existing planning processes for bulk power and distribution systems capture the impact of energy efficiency on power system reliability and resilience, with illustrative examples. We identify limitations in using existing reliability and resilience metrics to quantify efficiency and other distributed energy resource (DER) benefits. The paper concludes with opportunities for regulators and utilities to enhance planning practices to better capture the reliability and resilience value of energy efficiency and identifies research needs.

Automated summary

This paper explores the impact of energy efficiency on the reliability and resilience of power systems and highlights the limitations of existing metrics. Enhancing planning practices to better recognize the value of energy efficiency in terms of reliability and resilience presents an important opportunity for regulators and utilities.