Towards a Unified Framework for District Heating Resilience

Abstract

Ensuring an uninterrupted supply of energy, electricity, and heat is becoming a pressing necessity. Resilience is the ability of a system to recover from adversity and in connection with the critical infrastructure – the ability to prepare for and adapt to changing conditions, and withstand and recover rapidly from disruptions. If energy resilience has not been well considered or even ignored in the planning, design, and operation stages in district energy communities can lead to system fragility and vulnerability. Therefore, the research assesses the different methods for resilience assessment in energy systems by focusing on district heating. Based on current studies, the energy resilience assessment is mainly considered for the electricity transmission system. The study on heat supply resilience is limited. During the research of the literature, it has been concluded that there is no consistent quantitative and quality approach to resilience because there is no consistent treatment of the concept of resilience. There is a need for a fundamental generic quantitative and quality approach for resilience, which can be used for the development of resilient systems and effective resilience strategies for district heating systems.