In April 2023, the Federal Energy Management Agency (FEMA) awarded Austin Energy a Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant to study the resilience of Austin Energy’s overhead distribution system.

In this presentation, Austin Energy will summarize its journey to provide a more resilient electric infrastructure to the people of Austin. A roadmap of initiatives, best practices, and capital projects will be reviewed which will pave the path to hardened infrastructure and a more efficient response to severe disruptions.

The study’s results will be presented, including an “as-is” analysis of system resilience and recommendations for optimization and automation. These recommendations will enable Austin Energy to maximize load shed capability and provide ancillary benefits, such as enhanced system protection against wildfire risk and aging distribution infrastructure.   

The study comprised the following three main phases:

• As-is state of distribution resilience – Summary of Austin Energy’s overall ability to meet its stated goals considering its standards, philosophies, general work practices, design criteria manuals, and distribution interconnection guides
• Feeder automation studies - Detailed analysis of feeder-level historical load growth projections, distributed energy resource (DER) penetration rates, coordination studies including thermal, voltage, and protection performance of feeders, and substation equipment reviews.
• Future state of distribution resilience – Establish a framework of technologies and approaches in the industry that would increase Austin Energy’s grid operation and automation capabilities in ways outside of defined practices utilized today.