Assessing resilience in the energy supply sector

Methods for assessing the resilience of smart critical infrastructures (SCIs) has been developed in the EU project SmartResilience. The presentation aims to show the use of the methods and tools of the project as applied in the energy supply system of the city of Helsinki, Finland. A selected test scenario involves a period of cold spell that can realistically probe the performance and resilience of the city district heating network and its power plants that provide heating for most private and all public buildings in the city. A fire in an underground fuel storage initiates the scenario that escalates to reduced production capacity of the adjacent plant and to subsequent loss of another heating plant from the network. Reduced production combined with an extended period of full load demand due to freezing wintertime weather will start to cool the district heating network, resulting in potential need to evacuate or otherwise safeguard high-priority citizens such as the elderly and others who cannot rely on their own back-up alternatives. The scenario implies involvement of city infrastructures and actors beyond the energy supply system. The details are naturally reflected in the five phases of resilience and the associated indicators, and in the effort to improve or optimize resilience. The case and results are demonstrated and discussed using the project tools such as the dashboard, dynamic checklists and indicator database. The implications are also discussed from the point of view of further threats of interest, such as other cases and plausible scenarios from extreme weather or interdependencies and cascading events in the evolving national and European energy systems.