@article{a962432c06264949ad26e00e462b4971,
title = "The disaster resilience value of shared rooftop solar systems in residential communities",
abstract = "Distributed energy resources can enhance community resilience to power outages in the aftermath of natural disasters. This article presents a method to quantify the resilience value that rooftop solar systems can provide to residential neighborhoods. Homes are grouped into geographical clusters to simulate the effect of sharing energy when a disaster disables the electric grid and damages some of the homes. Historical energy consumption and solar irradiance data are used to estimate the likelihood that each cluster could meet its own energy needs, given a defined level and pattern of rooftop solar adoption. As a case study, the method is applied to single-family homes in San Carlos, California, subjected to a disaster scenario representing the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The case study shows how higher rooftop solar adoption levels increase postearthquake power accessibility during different seasons of the year. It also demonstrates that policy intervention can ensure more geographically uniform solar adoption and, therefore, more even resilience. Finally, the article evaluates the effect and cost of such an intervention, finding that a modest subsidy can make a notable difference in evening out resilience across a community.",
keywords = "Earthquake resilience, critical infrastructure, earthquake recovery, microgrids, power systems, solar panels",
author = "Siddharth Patel and Luis Ceferino and Chenying Liu and Anne Kiremidjian and Ram Rajagopal",
note = "Funding Information: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors acknowledge the generous support of the Thomas V. Jones Graduate Fellowship and the John A. Blume Fellowship from Stanford University. Funding Information: We thank Pacific Gas and Electric Company for providing the smart meter data used in this study. We thank Dr. Pablo Heresi for Universidad T{\'e}cnica Federico Santa Mar{\'i}a in Chile for processing the ground motion and vulnerability information with average spectral accelerations and for providing early access to fragility functions for one- and two-story wooden-frame houses. We thank Irene Alisjahbana for reviewing studies of earthquake damage to power systems and recent developments in microgrids. We thank Emily Alcazar for laying the groundwork for the geographic risk visualizations. The authors also acknowledge the generous support of the Thomas V. Jones Stanford Graduate Fellowship and the John A. Blume Fellowship. Funding Information: We thank Pacific Gas and Electric Company for providing the smart meter data used in this study. We thank Dr. Pablo Heresi for Universidad T?cnica Federico Santa Mar?a in Chile for processing the ground motion and vulnerability information with average spectral accelerations and for providing early access to fragility functions for one- and two-story wooden-frame houses. We thank Irene Alisjahbana for reviewing studies of earthquake damage to power systems and recent developments in microgrids. We thank Emily Alcazar for laying the groundwork for the geographic risk visualizations. The authors also acknowledge the generous support of the Thomas V. Jones Stanford Graduate Fellowship and the John A. Blume Fellowship. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors acknowledge the generous support of the Thomas V. Jones Graduate Fellowship and the John A. Blume Fellowship from Stanford University. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2021.",
year = "2021",
month = nov,
doi = "10.1177/87552930211020020",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "37",
pages = "2638--2661",
journal = "Earthquake Spectra",
issn = "8755-2930",
publisher = "Earthquake Engineering Research Institute",
number = "4",
}