An Insurance Paradigm for Improving Power System Resilience via Distributed Investment

Abstract

Extreme events, exacerbated by climate change, pose significant risks to the energy system and its consumers. However there are natural limits to the degree of protection that can be delivered from a centralised market architecture. Distributed energy resources provide resilience to the energy system, but their value remains inadequately recognized by regulatory frameworks. We propose an insurance framework to align residual outage risk exposure with locational incentives for distributed investment. We demonstrate that leveraging this framework in large-scale electricity systems could improve consumer welfare outcomes in the face of growing risks from extreme events via investment in distributed energy.