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Fundamental Resilience Strategies are needed for Electricity Supply

In their article on the special subject of resilience and vulnerability of infrastructures in the scientific journal “Ökologisches Wirtschaften”, the authors discuss the topic of the digitalization of the energy system. The digitalization offers many new opportunities for fluctuating, decentralized markets, but at the same time causes a new vulnerability with regard to supply reliability. Especially the system’s granularity affects its vulnerability and therefore has to be addressed in the political framework. In order to examine the main threats to a cyber-physical energy system, the researchers conducted a vulnerability analysis and interviewed experts. Like this, they identified a variety of conditions for an attack on the electricity system. Strongly centralized, but also very decentralized systems are regarded as hardly resilient. How to arrive at an adequate cell size, for example at the district level, will be the topic of further research. Concluding, the researchers summarize their resilience strategies in four management stages.