Microgrid Resilience: A holistic approach for assessing threats, identifying vulnerabilities, and designing corresponding mitigation strategies.

Microgrid deployment is growing in both industrialized and developing nations based on increasing recognition of microgrid benefits, such as operational flexibility, coordinated-energy management, self-adequacy, and increased overall reliability of power systems. This strong market growth is also driven by increased market penetration of distributed energy generation technologies, falling costs, a proven track record (through successful federal and private-sector pilot demonstrations), and technological improvements, such as power electronics and advanced controls. In the event of macrogrid outages (especially due to a longer duration emergency), the microgrid is considered a reliable backup system, providing resilience to the critical electrical loads; however, this requires that the microgrid itself is resilient enough to either defend against (in case of cyberattacks) or undergo threats (physical threats), and continue to provide electrical power. Building highly resilient microgrids requires a methodological assessment of potential threats, identification of vulnerabilities, and design of mitigation strategies. This paper attempts to holistically describe the meaning of microgrid resilience and provide a comprehensive review of threats, vulnerabilities, and mitigation strategies and a methodology for designing resilient microgrids by answering the following question: How can microgrid designers and site owners evaluate threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences to choose the microgrid features needed for building required resilience for a given situation?