Reliability and Resilience of Electric Power Infrastructures

Dear Colleagues,

The electric power infrastructure is a critical backbone of modern society, enabling essential services across all sectors. The ongoing transformation of the power grid—driven by the integration of renewable energy, the deployment of smart technologies, and the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events—presents both unprecedented opportunities and formidable challenges. While these advancements promote sustainability and efficiency, they also expose the system to new and complex vulnerabilities, spanning from physical structural failures to cyber–physical threats. Recent high-impact events, from hurricanes and ice storms to seismic activities and targeted cyber-attacks, have highlighted the need to evolve beyond traditional reliability metrics towards a holistic resilience paradigm. This entails not only the ability to prevent outages under normal and contingency conditions but also the capacity to anticipate, withstand, adapt to, and rapidly recover from disruptive High-Impact–Low-Probability (HILP) events.

This Special Issue is dedicated to advancing the science and engineering of reliable and resilient electric power infrastructures. It aims to bridge the gap between the structural integrity of physical components (e.g., transmission towers, lines, and substations) and the functional robustness of the integrated cyber–physical power system. We seek to compile pioneering research that addresses the entire lifecycle of power infrastructure, from design and planning to operation, maintenance, and recovery, under multi-hazard environments.

We invite the submission of high-quality original research and review articles that contribute to the theoretical, computational, and practical aspects of this field. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Reliability, Risk and Resilience Assessment:Novel frameworks for quantifying and modeling the reliability, fragility, risk, and resilience of electric power infrastructures and systems under coupled threats (e.g., wind, ice, earthquake, and climate change).
• Multi-Hazard Safety and Performance:Analysis and design of transmission towers, conductors, wind turbine, nuclear power structure, solar panel structure, substation/converter station, and other power facilities to withstand mechanical loads from wind, ice, and seismic activities and their combined effects.
• Novel Methods for Uncertainty Quantification and Reliability Assessment: Advanced techniques for characterizing and propagating uncertainties in material properties, load models, and environmental conditions to evaluate structure and system reliability.
• Lifecycle Engineering for Power Systems:Strategies for lifecycle cost optimization, condition assessment, predictive maintenance, and aging infrastructure management.
• Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation:Evaluating the impact of a changing climate on power infrastructure and developing adaptive planning and hardening strategies.
• Data-Driven and AI-Enabled Approaches:Application of artificial intelligence, machine learning, digital twins, and big data analytics for fault diagnosis, intrusion detection, load forecasting, and resilient control.
• Resilience-Oriented Planning and Operation:Design and coordination of microgrids, distributed energy resources (DERs), and islanding operations to enhance community-level resilience and ensure critical load supply.
• Cyber-Security of Smart Grids:Protecting communication networks, energy management systems, and industrial control systems (ICS/SCADA) against cyber-attacks, with a focus on the security of AI models and federated learning.
• Self-Healing Grids and Adaptive Restoration:Advanced technologies and strategies for automated fault location, isolation, and service restoration (FLISR).
• Structural Health Monitoring and Digital Provenance:Innovative sensing technologies and data provenance frameworks for real-time monitoring and integrity management of power assets.
• Case Studies and Lessons Learned:In-depth post-event analyses of blackouts and disruptive incidents, providing empirical insights and validation for theoretical models.

This Special Issue provides a platform for researchers, engineers, and policymakers to share the latest advancements and foster interdisciplinary collaborations. We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Tao Wang
Dr. You Dong
Prof. Dr. Zhengliang Li
Prof. Dr. Dagang Lu
Guest Editors

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