This initiative would contribute to the development of methods for valuation of societal benefits (including economic, public health, and other societal benefits) of customer and grid-resilience investments, such as microgrids, distributed generation, and storage. As a starting point, this research would include analyses of recent historical weather-related events and other situations (e.g., PSPS events) that have precipitated power outages as a basis for understanding the types of impacts that could be valued in the context of climate resilience by state and local governments. It would also evaluate the distribution of these events among ratepayers, with particular consideration of equity concerns and impacts on Disadvantaged Vulnerable Communities (DVCs), as defined by CPUC for the climate-vulnerability context.

The purpose of this solicitation is to fund applied research to collect data and apply methods that contribute to the practical understanding and valuation of electricity system resilience for the purpose of guiding investments by Investor-Owned Utilities (IOUs) and informing electricity resilience improvements overall. The proposed research is an energy-related environmental research project under the EPIC Interim Investment Plan 2021 initiative “Valuation of Investments in Electricity System Resilience.”  It will support two themes articulated in that plan:

• Resilience and Reliability;
• Equity.

Researchers supported by this solicitation will:

1. Conduct empirically-based analysis of societal costs of widespread long-duration power outages related to weather events, including impacts related to health and public safety risks, financial losses, productivity losses, and any other important disruptions;
2. Characterize these social impacts, with special attention to Disadvantaged Vulnerable Communities as defined by CPUC (Decision 20-08-046);
3. Analyze these results in a manner that informs electricity system and community resilience planning and investments beyond traditional benefit-cost paradigms—that is, the results should translate into a framework that can broadly inform the design, development, and selection of resilience and reliability measures; and
4. Be relevant to ongoing regulatory, planning, technology, research, and valuation efforts related to energy resiliency and reliability, thus producing pertinent research products and communications in this rapidly-evolving area.

A description of the project scope can be found on page 10 of the Solicitation Manual. See Supporting Documents, below.

• Others (see text field entitled "Additional Eligibility Criteria" for clarification)