Project Summary

WELLNESS will provide core evidence and a consistent approach to develop resilience standards that inform whole energy decision making, which capture multi-energy flexibility, to create a cost-effective and consistent UK resilience strategy.

This proposal will build on the resilience assessment framework developed in the "Forward Resilience Measures" NIA project The framework provides mechanisms to consistently identify, using state-of-the-art statistical approaches, conditions that cause the most extreme impacts on the transmission network. However, the framework is missing the latest resilience modelling innovations. More importantly, it disregards flexibility from the multi-energy technologies that are emerging in the distribution network. These flexible resources can offer a cost-effective measure against the more extreme network impacts.

WELLNESS brings together a team of experts with complementary skills to deliver the following strategic innovations:

• Investigate whole system application of demand side flexibility to support transmission and distribution networks. This will be led by NGET and ENWL who have vast experience operating transmission and distribution networks, deploying the latest innovation, in the face of extreme events such as Storm Arwen.
• Explore effective applications of flexibility (e.g., from EVs, mobile generators and storage and multi-energy sources) to support network operation. These activities will be led by ICL, which has vast experience in multi-energy flexibility modelling, and developing evidence to support regulation.
• Assess requirements to embed existing and emerging resilience measures into whole system decision making (operation and planning). UoM, building on their expertise on network decision making studies (operation and investment) and relevant requirements, will lead this task.
• Explore, considering stakeholder inputs, the importance of the latest resilience modelling innovations, e.g., enhanced fragility curves, cascading impact modelling coupled with machine learning, detailed restoration practices, etc. UCY will lead this activity based on their world leading expertise on resilience modelling, including proposal of relevant metrics.
• Quantify based on formal CBA, and different use cases, the economic benefits that proper resilience standards can bring to GB (e.g., resilience-informed investments). The task will be led by ARUP which specialises in business cases and CBA, and has experience shaping practice and sharing learning to support resilience best practice.

Our outputs will inform the Alpha phase, where the most attractive use cases will be identified for a practical demonstration in the Beta phase. Ultimately, the findings of WELLNESS will be critical for network operators and Ofgem.

Innovation Justification

Innovation Foundations:

Our team has been researching opportunities to develop a resilient energy system to support the UK's net-zero carbon future. This is a significant challenge as there are no existing resilience standards to guide planning and assessment of measures to improve system resilience to the increasingly harsh extreme events (e.g., floods, windstorms and lightning) experienced in GB.

To tackle this challenge, our team members lead significant work:

• Modelling impacts that extreme events and stresses have on the power network.
• Identifying key aspects of system resilience that matter to different stakeholders.
• Proposing metrics to quantify power system resilience which can be embedded in decision making.

Gaps in Knowledge:

Building on our expertise, we proposed the first standardised approach to consistently assess resilience measures for GB's transmission network in the "Forward Resilience Measures" (FRM) NIA project. However, this only considered windstorms and did not include the contributions of distribution networks to capture and deliver flexibility from multi-energy technologies to support whole system resilience. Deployment of flexibility can be the most cost-effective mitigation measure under extreme conditions. However, the use of these resources is not well understood and, currently, risky.

Innovation Opportunities:

To address the gaps, WELLNESS will deliver the following innovation:

• Develop models, within the FRM framework, to capture the operation and coordination of multi-energy flexibility as a means to provide resilience services at the distribution and transmission level.
• Update the FRM outputs to be included in a risk- and resilience-aware investment approach to plan GB's energy critical infrastructure, explicitly considering the need and opportunities for TNO-DSO coordination.

In addition, building recommendations from our latest UK and international work, (e.g., CIGRE Working Group C4.47 "Power System Resilience", CS-NOW, etc.), WELLNESS will maximise the impact of the above innovations by:

• Capturing the impacts of multiple extreme hazards through enhanced fragility and vulnerability assessment modelling (e.g., flood modelling considering structural damage) including extreme stresses such as long periods without renewable energy generation.
• Considering detailed network operation and restoration, such as cascading impacts of extreme events coupled with machine learning approaches in a net-zero world.
• Developing open-access resilience assessment tools that can be readily adopted by stakeholders.

Funding justification:

The scope of the project in whole systems goes beyond NIA applications, whereas the aim to develop tools with high TRL levels are outside the scope of research funds (EPSRC).

Appendix – Innovation justification
We need a resilient energy system that can safely support a net-zero carbon future even in the face of harsher extreme events in GB such as windstorms, floods and lightning. This will only be possible if we secure sufficient evidence and methods to develop resilience standards to inform power system decision making (operation and investment), which currently do not exist anywhere in the world.
To fill this gap in knowledge we (NGET, ARUP, UCY and UoM) proposed the “Forward Resilience Measures” GB work (£427k, NIA) to produce evidence and a standardised approach to assess transmission network resilience in GB. The key novelties of the work include:

• Moving away from selecting specific “extreme events” to statistically capturing how different combinations of events and network condition cause “extreme network impacts” by exploiting network vulnerabilities, as recommended in the RESNET UK project (£415k, EPSRC
• Using risk assessment techniques, borrowed from finances, to quantify extreme network impacts, and produce metrics (e.g., Conditional Value at Risk of Energy Not Supplied) as shown in the disaster management and resilience in electric power systems UK project (£241k, EPSRC).
• Capturing stakeholder feedback to identify areas of interest, e.g., vulnerable customers.
• High spatial resolution modelling, using forecasted (hourly) demand profiles produced at the primary substation levels, to capture impacts on specific areas of the network, e.g., location of  critical loads (hospitals) and vulnerable customers. 

The project provided key evidence to develop transmission network resilience standards against windstorms, with focus on assessing (not proposing) resilience measures and without capturing interactions with the distribution network and its emerging flexible multi-energy resources. This is not sufficient to inform the future GB resilience strategy which must capture the benefits brought by decarbonisation, e.g., electrified heating and transport, and multi-energy systems.
WELLNESS builds on our previous work, and brings expertise on distribution networks (ENWL) and flexible multi-energy demand side resources (ICL), to develop adequate resilience standards that can be used by network operators and regulators to support decision making aligned with a cost-effective GB whole system resilience strategy. For this purpose, the following innovations are pursued:

• Optimisation and coordination of multi-energy technology operation to provide whole system resilience services. These technologies offer cost-effective services by deploying already 
  existing resources that can shift to different energy vectors to provide system services without compromising customer needs, e.g., smart EV charging and storing electricity as heat, etc.
• Moving from only assessing resilience measures to also embedding them in network decision making in consideration of flexibility exchanges (at TNO/DSO interfaces), effectively trading risks between different networks.

In addition to maximise the impacts of the above innovation, WELLNESS:

• Adopts the latest resilience research and stakeholder feedback from leading resilience groups led or supported by our team, e.g., CIGRE (Working Group C4.47 “Power System Resilience” and C1.33 “Multi-energy system interactions in distribution grid”) and BEIS (CS-NOW: “Climate services for a Net Zero resilient world”, £5m) and EPSRC (Supergen “Energy Networks Hub”).
• Captures a wide range of extreme events in GB, including windstorms, floods and lightning, supported by novel fragility modelling, e.g., capturing power network structural damage caused by floods by implementing key research outputs such as from TERSE (£1m, EPSRC).
• Couples novel spatial and temporal cascading event simulators (both dynamic and quasi-static) with advanced machine learning algorithms for the accurate and fast (close to real time) assessment and identification of high risks to national system resilience, also considering restoration challenges in a net-zero world

Project Benefits

There are currently no resilience standards that can be used for network decision making in the UK. Accordingly, the effectiveness of current network reinforcement projects, such as the Network Option Assessment (NOA), may be wrongly assessed, which can lead to additional investments and purchase of network services to meet the resilience needs of the UK energy system. Considering that large volumes of investments in new infrastructures (e.g., traditional resilience measures) and flexibility services (e.g., emerging resilience measures) will be required to further support a net zero energy system, proper resilience standards would lead to more cost-effective investments and significant savings.

By developing this resilience assessment framework, both transmission and distribution networks will be able to properly leverage the outputs to deliver optimised, integrated whole energy system resilience investment into the network. It's perceived that this level of co-ordination will help to reduce the costs associated with network reinforcement, leading to a reduction in operation expenditure from any one network. Additionally, by building resilience into the network, the impacts of any extreme events will be effectively mitigated, avoiding any maladaptation thus leading to a reduction in both customer interruptions (CI) or Customer Minutes Lost (CML) and the operational costs associated with responding to them. The use of flexibility to provide cross boundary support, in conjunction with more traditional reinforcement, will provide a cost-effective means of securing the network against the impact of these events.

Once the assessment framework is developed, and the project passes into the Alpha and Beta phases, the proposed solutions will be compared against current methodologies to demonstrate the benefits, cost effectiveness and the enhanced resilience of the outcomes.