Electricity system resilience in a world of increased climate change and cybersecurity risk

Abstract

The shift to widely distributed forms of energy generation and storage, requiring increased interconnectivity to geographically balance supply with distributed demand for electricity, creates a more complex electrical network – the ‘Internet of Energy’. A growing array of threats now impact the resilience of the electrical network including digitalisation, cybersecurity, technological changes of the power system, and the potential for climate change to expose the system to more extreme weather events. Whether distributed and renewable electricity systems will be more resilient through multiple pathways and redundancy, or less resilient due to greater cybersecurity risks than a conventional centralised electricity system, is the key focus of this paper.