Planning for the storm: Considering renewable energy for critical infrastructure resilience

Benchmark the economic value of renewable energy and battery storage systems to extend operation of certain critical infrastructure facilities in different markets.

This study uses the renewable energy optimization model to assess three critical facilities in North Caro-lina. Techno-economic results were then compared to analyses completed for critical facilities in California and New York to assess energy system cost effectiveness.

Though solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays are cost-effective across each of the three North Carolina facili-ties, adopting battery storage to enable PV to operate with existing diesel generators in a hybrid energy system re-duces the economic value of the system. This is in contrast to more economically viable systems in California and New York. All of these systems also offer unquantified resilience benefits by extending operation from hours to weeks across the facilities.

If decision makers were able to value the resilience benefits offered by each system or utility rate structures were changed to incentivize battery storage during normal operations, it would impact these assessments. Even so, this analysis provides decision makers a key set of cost benchmarks when considering how they might im-prove resilience at their critical operations.