Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Heightened attention on energy affordability has increased scrutiny of retail electricity rates across the United States. While severe weather events and other increasing hazards require investments in grid resilience, they must be balanced with affordability, grid modernization, meeting load growth and achieving other energy goals. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, this technical brief explores how utilities, regulators, and utility consumer offices understand, negotiate and evaluate tradeoffs between different distribution planning goals. We find that the three core groups perceive resilience as a driver of affordability challenges, struggle to distinguish between resilience and reliability investments, and lack widely accepted metrics to effectively evaluate resilience investments. Interviewees offer perspectives on key challenges for resilience planning, integration between resilience and other electricity planning processes, and potential future directions. By improving understanding of the drivers of utility and regulatory decision-making and utility consumer positions, this research contributes to a growing body of work seeking to understand the opportunities to balance competing grid objectives.