Current Practices in Distribution Utility Resilience Planning for Hurricanes and Non-Winter Storms

Summary

This report by NREL, published in August 2024, reviews current distribution utility resilience planning practices for hurricanes and non-winter storms across six U.S. utilities. It identifies common approaches and areas for improvement, assessing utilities against six resilience planning components like hazard characterization, metrics, and investment prioritization. Key findings include a variety of storm impacts, such as Detroit Edison Electric experiencing a 2020 storm that affected almost 500,000 customers, and Entergy Louisiana having the highest Expected Annual Loss (EAL) at $2 billion due to high hurricane and flooding risks. Utilities employ diverse strategies, from CMP's five-year vegetation management cycle to DTEE's adoption of Grade B construction standards, and improved outage restoration estimates from 60% to 87% in 2020. The report highlights opportunities for standardized data collection, improved performance metrics for long-duration outages (as the current LBNL tool is for <24 hours), and multi-objective planning to enhance overall resilience.

Key Facts

Source Document

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