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The ARCHER Project, Resiliency Planning Framework

This Department of Energy (DOE)-funded project is developing a planning and operations framework with a community focus that uses distributed energy resources (DER) to provide more energy resilience in the face of power outages caused by extreme weather events.

Project Snapshot

Get a high-level look at the initial scope and desired outcomes of this project.

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Case Study

Explore a detailed account of the project approach, results and lessons learned.

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Project Summary

Nashville, like many other communities, has faced several severe weather events that have caused numerous city-wide outages over the last decade. Power outages are more than just an inconvenience - they can be life-threatening for some groups of people. There are opportunities for communities and utilities to collaborate to use DER to limit outages – and rapidly restore – electricity should there be a power disruption.

The ARCHER framework provides a methodology to understand risks – social, energy, environmental and grid – that can minimize the burden of power outages on residents, especially those in disadvantaged communities. This project is helping the city of Nashville inform investments in community resilience by accounting for energy and social burden discrepancies, varying access to services and disparate living conditions. By developing and testing a framework with planning guidelines, practices and activities that enhance community resilience, the Nashville-based project is helping ensure future events are met with appropriate responses.

The ARCHER Project - Resiliency Planning Framework Illustration

Enhancing Community Resilience

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“We always talk about grid resilience as keeping the lights on and restoring power as quickly as possible. But when you look at it through the lens of community resilience, there are different actions that a utility would take to provide resilience to the community.”

Jared Green  |  principal technical leader, EPRI

Project Details

Location
Nashville, Tennessee

Budget

  • Total Funding: $1,250,000
  • DOE Project Funds to EPRI: $1,000,000
  • TVA Connected Communities: $250,000

Focus Area

  • Enhanced Community Resiliency

Project Lead

  • Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)

Additional Partners

  • City of Nashville
  • Department of Energy (DOE)
  • Larsen & Toubro
  • Nashville Electric Service
  • Recurve
  • Tennessee State University
  • Tennessee Valley Authority
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“By infusing this community resilience piece, we think about it in the context of the needs of the community beyond just the critical customers, beyond the hospitals and water treatment facilities. That has been the focus of the project since the very beginning. Thinking about this not from necessarily a grid perspective, but from a community perspective.”

Jared Green  |  principal technical leader, EPRI