Mapping the electric vulnerability index: A metric for targeting energy storage resilience solutions

Uninterrupted access to electricity is critical to the safety and security of American households. More frequent and extreme emergency events increase outages across the country, disproportionately impacting vulnerable communities that experience the most frequent and longest outages, are most sensitive to the loss of electric power, and have the least capacity to adapt to these conditions. This study devises a metric, the Electric Vulnerability Index (EVI), that captures relative exposure, sensitivity, and adaptability to electric outages, and validates this metric against the 2021 Winter Storm Uri in Texas. Though not ubiquitous, similar trends were observed between adjacent areas with higher EVI and those with higher outage rates from this storm. EVI is mapped across the continental United States and offered as a viable approach to quantify a population’s vulnerability to electric outages to aid policymakers, advocates, and energy system stakeholders in the targeted deployment of resilience solutions, such as energy storage, to communities most in need.