Resiliency is rapidly becoming a top-of-mind concern for utilities and energy consumers alike. According to a recent industry report, while 81% of Americans are at least somewhat worried about the cost of electricity, 61% are still willing to pay slightly more for electricity if it provides a more reliable energy source. However, challenges to resiliency abound—including aging infrastructure, blackouts, increasing security threats, extreme weather, wildfires, the accelerating integration of renewable energy, and load growth from data centers. As these pressures continue to intensify, utilities must ensure their electric grids can withstand and recover from disruptions.
What is Grid Resiliency?
Grid resilience refers to the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing conditions and withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from disruptions—such as deliberate attacks, accidents, or naturally occurring threats or incidents. While resilience and reliability are interrelated, they are two distinct concepts. Reliability typically deals with routine, shorter-term events, whereas resilience focuses on low-probability, high-consequence disruptions. Trade-offs can occur between reliability and resilience, although a more resilient system is generally more reliable. Resilience is about more than robustness—in addition to resisting stress, resilient grids recover swiftly and adapt to future uncertainties.
Challenges to Grid Resiliency
Today's utilities face a unique intersection of increasingly complex challenges:
Natural disasters: From wildfires and hurricanes to ice storms and heat waves, extreme weather events are growing in frequency and severity. These events can down lines, damage substations, and leave thousands without power for extended periods. For instance, in January 2024, a severe winter storm swept across the Midwest and East Coast of the United States, bringing heavy snow, ice, and high winds. The extreme conditions caused widespread damage to power lines and substations, resulting in outages that affected close to 900,000 customers at the peak of the event.Â
Physical and cyber security threats: Grids are critical infrastructure and utilities rely on interconnected systems to run and manage them. This makes them appealing targets for both physical sabotage and cyberattacks. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, attacks on utility systems have risen sharply, necessitating ever-tighter protections and vigilant monitoring. For example, in February 2024, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with the FBI and Department of Energy, warned that a cyberattack campaign known as “Volt Typhoon,” linked to China, had penetrated the networks of multiple critical infrastructure organizations—including electric utilities. The campaign, discovered in early 2024, involved stealthy intrusions designed for long-term persistence and cyber espionage, with the potential to disrupt operations. According to the agencies, the attackers leveraged “living off the land” techniques, making their activity harder to detect, and—in some cases—had maintained access to utility networks for months.Â
Recently, NERC’s 2025 ERO Reliability Risk Priorities Report found that “Cyber Security Vulnerabilities” ranked second among the Top Five risks identified. The report added, “Cyber threats are increasing in frequency and sophistication and are benefiting from an increased attack surface as the grid becomes more digitized.”
Load growth and grid complexity: The need for “Grid Transformation” ranked first among the Top Five risks identified in the NERC report. The electric grid is evolving and becoming more complicated to manage as the power required to run AI grows, changing weather patterns fuel more extreme storms and wildfires, and electrification of transportation, building heating, and other sectors accelerates. In addition, modern customers are integrating distributed energy resources (DERs) like solar and battery storage. This is all contributing to greater electricity demand. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), total electricity demand in the United States is projected to grow at 2.3% in 2025 and 3% in 2026. Furthermore, the expansion of data centers to support AI is on course to account for almost half of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030. These factors complicate load forecasting, voltage management, and system balancing.
Key strategies to Enhance Grid ResiliencyÂ
The good news is that utilities can build resiliency with a multifaceted approach:
Improve physical and cyber security by hardening assets, deploying redundant components and smart sensors, as well as instituting robust cybersecurity practices to protect against both physical and digital threats. “Organizations need to strive to ensure their operations and customer data are defended by high-performing, industry-tested technologies, backed by transparent policies, security best practices, and relentless cybersecurity hygiene,” says Hafid Elabdellaoui, Vice President of Cybersecurity for Oracle’s Infrastructure Industries. “This offers peace of mind in an ever-evolving and escalating threat landscape.”
Enable smooth adoption and integration of DERs such as solar, storage, and electric vehicles, and flexible loads to enhance both reliability and flexibility in the face of disruption. “In light of the growing volume of DERs, we are seeing utilities move to secured unified grid platforms to empower their DER orchestration,” says Arun Nimmala, Global Head, Oracle DERMS and OT Solutions. “In this changing energy landscape, they seek to deliver reliable service, accelerate the energy transition, and build a sustainable, future-ready grid.”
Foster situational awareness and enable rapid response to disturbances by adopting smart grid technologies such as advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), advanced distribution management systems (AMDS), and distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS) for safety, real-time monitoring, and automation. In fact, a recent industry survey of more than 60 utilities indicates the industries show a slow and deliberate progression towards ADMS and DERMS. Â
Drive deeper insights and better-informed, faster decisions with artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics. AI and machine learning can help improve operational functions, such as predictive maintenance, outage forecasting, restoration efforts, and DER optimization. "As the electric grid expands with an increasing array of connected devices, harnessing the vast streams of data they produce is critical for monitoring operations in real time and driving proactive, data-driven decision-making," says Piyush Mishra, Product Manager at Oracle.Â
The Path Forward
The growing complexity of today’s energy ecosystem makes grid resiliency both a pressing challenge and a key differentiator for utilities and energy consumers. Regulatory and public sentiments are clear: Reliability is essential, and many are willing to invest more for greater peace of mind. The grid’s mounting challenges—from extreme weather and sophisticated cyberattacks to rapid load growth driven by electrification and digitalization—require utilities to take decisive steps to evolve.
Building a more resilient grid means going beyond incremental upgrades. It requires comprehensive adoption of proven security technologies, seamless orchestration of DERS, deployment of smart grid platforms, and—most importantly—leveraging data-driven insights through AI and analytics. Utilities that proactively invest in these strategies will be better positioned to withstand and recover from unforeseen disruptions, safeguard critical operations, and empower their customers with the reliable service they expect—even as the risk landscape continues to shift.
Ultimately, grid resiliency is not just about fortifying infrastructure; it’s about future-proofing the energy foundation on which we all depend. As investment and innovation accelerate, utilities have an opportunity to lead the way and deliver reliable, resilient, and sustainable energy solutions.
To learn more about Oracle Utilities' solutions for electric grid resiliency, visit https://www.oracle.com/industries/utilities/Â