Methodologies for characterising and valuing energy security — A short critical review

Abstract

Security of supply is widely addressed in the academia. In this paper we conduct a review of methodologies, discuss strengths and weaknesses and identify areas that would benefit from further research and methodology development. A distinction is made between methodologies used to assess general vulnerability and those that value the outcome of insecurity by testing how energy systems respond to disturbances. The former group contains methods that value scarcity of primary fuels, reliable infrastructure, import dependence, economic factors, diversity and those that are used to simultaneously analyse several of these aspects. Disturbances that are analysed are shortage of primary fuel, system failure (caused deliberately or accidently), the end users' cost of a power outage and price spikes.