CALCULATING Resilience

RUNWITHIT Synthetics (RWI) announced their successful completion of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) Incubatenergy Labs 2020 Challenge, furnishing insight into the amplified human impacts during a power outage combined with the unprecedented circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. This project was a demonstration of how RWI’s Synthetic Modelling technology extends current energy investment calculations to include resilience scenarios.

Using Synthetic Modelling, RWI created a live synthetic twin of an area in a large US city, complete with its grid and citizens, as well as synthesizing new consumption patterns, health risks and economic vulnerability created by COVID-19. RWI’s Synthetic Model populated accurate information hyper-localized entities including 18,115 residences, 39,000 people, 2100 businesses and 7,225 infrastructure assets.

Through a proprietary process, RWI synthesized a detailed, accurate demographic and psychographic population based on publicly available information, research, and consumer surveys. This population is then brought to life with the additions of patterns of life, incentive responses, health conditions, working from home, consumer segments, sensitivities and even their forward looking energy plans. With each unique synthetic person, RWI explored the effects of outages on customer trust, vulnerable populations as well as the role communication investment plays outcomes and sentiment throughout a power outage. RWI can survey this synthetic population to calculate the deltas between different investments and their impact on their future engagement with smart technologies. All without relying on access to protected data.

An important part of these surveys was to quantify the changes in Willingness to Pay, depending on customer experience of the outage, previous experience of outages and causes of outages. Willingness to Pay (WTP) is a way of measuring how customers value reliability and this has changed during COVID-19, with many working from home and more people vulnerable to heat. Matched with measures taken by residents and businesses to look after back up and auxiliary power, now and after outages during COVID-19, suggests opportunities for investments in community resilience through green technology.

EPRI and SRP (Salt River Projects), reviewed and validated RWI’s technology, techniques, and findings with demonstration sponsors and partners, utility advisors (Xcel Energy, Ameren, American Electric Power), and the EPRI membership.

EPRI Final Report: https://labs.incubatenergy.org/en/page/past-projects-en

Incubatenergy Labs demo day interview: https://vimeo.com/475947876/8797a0c9e1

RUNWITHIT is actively working to contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). This project has contributed to the following SDG’s: