Flexibility sources for enhancing the resilience of a power grid in presence of severe weather conditions

Severe weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity over the time with increasingly severe impacts on daily human activities, often dramatically inhibited by disastrous consequences with disruptions of communications, goods, public transports water and energy services. In this context the electric grids are very vulnerable and suffer very serious consequences, with presence of multiple contingencies. It is therefore necessary to have grids with adequate level of resilience to cope with this event and to ensure adequate service levels. For this reason, the authors of the paper, in cooperation with the Italian Transmission Operator, have proposed an advanced methodological approach able to improve the resilience levels of transmission grids in presence of natural disastrous events characterized by low probability and high impacts. The new approach is performed by flexibility tools able to combine the flexibility margins of the networks with those of generations and loads. Moreover, in the paper, new indexes have been defined and applied in case studies for the resilience characterization.