The Distributed Generation (DG) for Resilience Planning Guide provides information and resources on how DG, with a focus on combined heat and power (CHP), can help communities meet resilience goals and ensure critical infrastructure remains operational regardless of external events. If used in combination with a surveying of critical infrastructure at a regional level, this guide also provides tools and analysis capabilities to help decision makers, policy makers, utilities, and organizations determine if DG is a good fit to support resilience goals for critical infrastructure in their specific jurisdiction, territory, or organization.
With the guide, decision makers, state and local policy makers, and utilities can get up to speed on the role of DG and CI in resilience planning. Decision makers and policy makers can use the guide to learn how to determine where DG can be a good fit for critical infrastructure in their territories or organizations, what types of DG are best suited to certain types of CI applications, and how to incorporate DG into their resilience plans. Through the guide, utilities can also gain an understanding of how DG for CI can help utilities engage with customers and provide support to local grids. The guide provides users with a variety of background resources:
The CHP Site Screening Tool is available as either an online or excel-based tool that can provide an individual site screening assessment for CHP based on a variety of user inputs and pre-determined metrics.
Resilience Risk Evaluation ToolThe Resilience Risk Evaluation Tool is an Excel-based tool that can provide a resilience screening assessment for up to 200 individual sites. The tool is based solely on evaluating site resiliency factors and does not take into account onsite economics.
Critical Infrastructure (CI) 101This section provides general background information on the different critical infrastructure sectors defined by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and their National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP), and why energy resilience for individual critical infrastructure facilities is important. It also provides critical infrastructure resiliency planning specific to the energy sector.
Combined Heat and Power (CHP) 101This section provides a general overview of CHP technologies, benefits compared to separate heat and power (SHP) generation, the historical and current market for CHP, and a variety of CHP resources.
Solar + Energy Storage 101This section provides a general overview of distributed solar and energy storage technologies, resilience benefits of solar + storage at CI facilities, and the current market for distributed solar and energy storage.
Microgrids 101This section provides details on microgrid basics, from technology configurations to potential ownership models. It also highlights the role that CHP can play in supporting microgrids and how microgrids can support resilience in CI operations.
Applying CHP in Critical Infrastructure 101This sections highlights CHP's role in increasing the resiliency of critical infrastructure, as well as detailing CI sectors conducive to CHP deployment. It also provides information on how to value the reliability benefits of CHP when compared to traditional backup generation.
Case StudiesThis sections highlight real world examples of microgrids and CHP, solar, and energy storage systems operating and providing resilience benefits (among others) to critical infrastructure sites.
The CHP for Resiliency Accelerator is a collaborative effort with states, communities, utilities, and other stakeholders with the goal of supporting and expanding the consideration of CHP solutions to keep critical infrastructure operational regardless of external events. This guide incorporates examples of how Accelerator Partners have:
- Examined the perceptions of CHP among resiliency planners,
- Identified gaps in current technologies or information relative to resiliency needs, and
- Developed plans for communities to capitalize on CHP’s strengths as a reliable, high-efficiency, low-emissions source of electricity and thermal energy for critical infrastructure.