Distribution Grid Resilience Planning
NLR advances data-driven resilience planning and decision support, including technical assistance, to enhance distribution grid system performance during disruptive events.
This work is made possible through broad support and funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity.
Capabilities
Distribution grid resilience planning capabilities include:
- Distribution-level hazard and vulnerability assessments
- Event-specific distribution grid performance and consequence metrics
- Distribution grid modeling and disruption scenario analysis
- Resilience investment and cost-benefit analysis
- Transferable lessons and scalable solutions.
Analysis and Decision Support
NLR's research-based insights inform decision-making and investments at the distribution grid level for utilities, states, local governments, and other communities. Unmatched capabilities in modeling and simulation, data analysis, and techno-economic feasibility enable strategic near- and long-term planning.
Leveraging a suite of integrated tools, NLR helps partners implement data-driven solutions and make decisions about resilience investments while considering limited resources, funding, and workforce.
Metrics and Consequence Insights
NLR leverages utility outage and system data to calculate event-specific metrics that describe distribution grid impacts and performance, including outage incidence and duration, restoration, and customer impacts. Additional metrics describe the consequences to customers during long-duration outages, including access to critical services such as shelter, medical and health care, food, and fuel.
Modeling and Simulation
NLR combines hazard information with distribution system models to evaluate how disruptive events may affect grid infrastructure and service. Scenario-based analysis can identify vulnerable assets and customers, estimate outage and restoration impacts, and compare strategies such as infrastructure hardening, undergrounding, switching, distributed energy resources, and other resilience investments.
Technical Assistance for Distribution Grid Resilience
Funded by DOE, NLR delivers technical assistance to enhance electric grid resilience against extreme weather, wildfire, and other natural disasters. DOE provides up to $5 billion in grants for states, federally recognized Tribes, U.S. territories, electric grid operators, electricity storage operators, electricity generators, transmission owners or operators, distribution providers, and fuel suppliers.
Request grid resilience assistance through DOE.
Distribution Grid Resilience Projects
Strategies for Flood Resilience Investments in Iowa
NLR identified actionable and cost-effective strategies for the state of Iowa to improve flood preparedness and system resilience.
Flooding is a major and persistent threat to Iowa's distribution grid, yet it is not fully accounted for in utility resilience planning, which has historically emphasized wind and ice.
NLR applied hazard analysis and modeling to evaluate grid impacts under various flood scenarios. By comparing strategies such as equipment hardening, relocation, system configuration, and other targeted upgrades, utilities can prioritize investments that reduce outage impacts while avoiding unnecessary or less cost-effective improvements.
Strategies for Flood Resilience and Grid Investments Among Iowa's Electric Distribution Utilities, NLR Technical Report (2026)
Grid Resilience Decision-Making in Rural Minnesota
NLR delivered actionable analysis and metrics for Minnesota utilities to assess technical strategies to strengthen reliability and access to critical services in rural communities.
NLR equipped rural utilities in Minnesota with practical metrics and strategies to guide grid resilience investments and improve access to critical services through development of a guide. The guide uses wind risk analysis, outage data, and household access to critical services to prioritize actions such as targeted undergrounding, pole hardening, and vegetation management that address prolonged outages.
The effort introduced 14 practical resilience metrics that help quantify impacts and guide strategies to strengthen service continuity.
Guidance for Grid Resilience Decisions in Rural Minnesota, NLR Technical Report (2025)
Publications
View all NLR publications on distribution grid resilience planning research on the NLR publications database.
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Last Updated Oct. 8, 2026