Equitable grid resilience: Leveraging insights on power outage equity to develop incentive programs for customer resilience

As extreme weather events such as wildfires, ice storms, tornadoes and hurricanes increase in frequency and severity, the need to enhance grid resilience has become more urgent, particularly for power distribution systems in vulnerable regions. Traditional reliability assessments often fall short in addressing the prolonged outages caused by these extreme events. At the same time, socio-economic disparities exacerbate the impacts of power outages, as disadvantaged communities experience a disproportionate share of disruptions. This thesis addresses both the technical and social dimensions of grid resilience by designing an equitable incentive program aimed at improving power resilience in disadvantages communities. Building on research that identifies inequities in power outages linked to socio-economic factors such as poverty, unemployment, minority status, and disability, the study proposes a customer resilience solution grounded in decision-making behaviors of end users, modeled by prospect theory. The proposed solution designs an incentive program for adoption of resilience-enhancing products, including diesel generators, solar PV systems, and/or battery systems, to reduce outages and mitigate their impact. Guided by equity principles such as the "No-Loser" Criterion, the “Cost-Benefit” Criterion, and “Equal Access”, the proposed program ensures that all stakeholders: utilities, participants, and non-participants alike benefit from the improvements, while providing targeted support to socio-economically disadvantaged communities. Through surveys and expert decision-making models, the program tailors’ incentives to effectively bridge the identified gaps in grid resilience, fostering an equitable and resilient power system for all.