Resilience Metrics for Building-Level Electrical Distribution Systems with Energy Storage

Abstract

The energy system infrastructure that delivers power to a building’s loads needs to be resilient to withstand and recover from extreme outages (e.g., grid faults that leave millions of people without power during severe weather events). Building-level electrical distribution systems (BEDSs) distribute power from a building’s energy sources—including the grid, solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, and batteries—to its loads, including lighting, HVAC, and plug loads. BEDS with storage can provide resilience by distributing local electricity supply to critical loads during an outage. Quantitative metrics are needed to assess the resilience improvements associated with new BEDS and storage system technologies. In this paper, we apply an existing metric, the probability of outage survival curve (POSC), to BEDS with storage and propose novel metrics that improve upon POSC. Through a simulation-based case study, we demonstrate how these metrics are impacted by the BEDS design and how they can be used to design a resilient system.