Regulatory incentives for improving the resilience of electricity distribution grids in Italy

Abstract

In adopting the regulation for the regulatory period 2016-2023, ARERA (the Italian Regulatory Authority for Energy, Networks and Environment) has paid close attention to electricity grids resilience, and launched a multi-year initiative to increase the resilience of both transmission and distribution grids, intervening on three different aspects: (i) improving network planning in order to better consider the risk of disruptions due to extremely severe weather events, (ii) introducing new incentive schemes aimed at increasing network capability to cope with this kind of events, and (iii) promoting faster supply restoration even under emergency conditions, ensuring appropriate customer protection from very long interruptions. This paper illustrates the above regulatory initiatives, focusing in particular on those relevant for distribution systems.