Resilient Power Best Practices Document Prepares Critical Facilities for Disasters

In partnership with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Resilient Power Working Group (RPWG), muGrid Analytics participated in detailing the resilience best practices in clean energy for a variety of critical facilities and sites.

Dr. Travis Simpkins and Amy Simpkins of muGrid Analytics served as resiliency experts and members of the Resilient Power Working Group (RPWG) to contribute to a government issued document, Resilient Power Best Practices for Critical Facilities and Sites with Guidelines, Analysis, Background Material, and References, released in November 2022. The role of this group was to establish Best Practices that improve resiliency and help the nation “withstand and recover rapidly from deliberate attacks, accidents, and natural disasters” and is a collaboration with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a division of the Department of Homeland Security.

“This is all about preparedness,” said Amy Simpkins, CEO of muGrid Analytics. “Being prepared is an antidote to fear.”

As distributed energy becomes increasingly widespread, but is still fairly nascent, the most widespread, long-term communications outages have been caused by lack of power. To address this, CISA assembled experts from various government departments and agencies, non-governmental organizations, and private industry to create the RPWG and the best practices document.

“The importance of preparedness, networking (developing personal relationships) and information sharing prior to a power outage cannot be understated,” the document asserts. “Together, we can reduce the consequences from short-term outages while preparing for long-term outages that could cause substantial economic and societal issues including loss of life.”

Overall economics and resilience benefits for distributed energy systems can also be improved by following the Resilient Power Best Practices for Critical Facilities and Sites document. muGrid provided analysis and case studies showing how hybrid microgrids increase the stochastic resilience of a site along with technical expertise regarding practical implementation of resilient microgrids.

A Renewable Energy Hybrid System (REHS) with solar and energy storage added to a generator can significantly increase resiliency and provide cost effective long duration backup power that is cleaner and more efficient than fuel based generators alone.

Contact us: hello@mugrid.com to learn more about how we can help you improve resilience and save on your utility bill.