IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v18y2025i11p2755-d1664575.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Integrated Analysis of Operator Response Capacity, Energy Policy Support and Infrastructure Robustness in Power Grid Resilience Under Severe Weather Events: Lessons from Malawi

Author

Listed:
  • Joyce Nyuma Chivunga

    (Centre for Renewable Energy Systems Technology, Loughborough University, Epinal Way, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK
    Department of Energy Resources Management, Malawi University of Science and Technology, Limbe P.O. Box 5196, Malawi)

  • Zhengyu Lin

    (Centre for Renewable Energy Systems Technology, Loughborough University, Epinal Way, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK)

  • Richard Blanchard

    (Centre for Renewable Energy Systems Technology, Loughborough University, Epinal Way, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK)

Abstract

With the multidisciplinary complexity of resilience challenges, holistic evaluation and enhancement have been the main concerns in resilience research. This paper addresses this gap by demonstrating the integrated analysis of operator response capacity, energy policy support and infrastructure robustness using Malawi’s cases. The three individual case studies were pooled, focusing on integrating their resilience indicators, identifying the resilience weaknesses and mapping their interdependencies to inform holistic integrated, holistic enhancement measures. A nuanced understanding of resilience was achieved by integrating indicators based on their respective capacities (preventive and anticipative, absorptive, adaptive, restorative and transformative) across the three resilience dimensions (operator, policy and infrastructure). Mapping relationships between indicators revealed crucial interdependencies and was essential for understanding the complex relationships that underpin resilience. This resulted in development of an integrated resilience framework (IRF) which provides guidelines for comprehensive and inclusive resilience evaluations, especially for weak and underdeveloped grids. The structure of the electricity supply and institutional challenges are at the centre of Malawi’s resilience challenges, aggravated by the non-implementation of the energy policy, which results from, among other reasons, political interference and financial constraints. The paper provides integrated solutions to the identified resilience challenges.

Suggested Citation

  • Joyce Nyuma Chivunga & Zhengyu Lin & Richard Blanchard, 2025. "Integrated Analysis of Operator Response Capacity, Energy Policy Support and Infrastructure Robustness in Power Grid Resilience Under Severe Weather Events: Lessons from Malawi," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(11), pages 1-30, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:18:y:2025:i:11:p:2755-:d:1664575
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/11/2755/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/11/2755/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hossain, Eklas & Roy, Shidhartho & Mohammad, Naeem & Nawar, Nafiu & Dipta, Debopriya Roy, 2021. "Metrics and enhancement strategies for grid resilience and reliability during natural disasters," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 290(C).
    2. Benjamin Sovacool, 2012. "Expert views of climate change adaptation in the Maldives," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 114(2), pages 295-300, September.
    3. Verena Nüchter & David J. Abson & Henrik von Wehrden & John-Oliver Engler, 2021. "The Concept of Resilience in Recent Sustainability Research," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-21, March.
    4. Sinsel, Simon R. & Yan, Xuqian & Stephan, Annegret, 2019. "Building resilient renewable power generation portfolios: The impact of diversification on investors’ risk and return," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 254(C).
    5. Handayani, Kamia & Filatova, Tatiana & Krozer, Yoram & Anugrah, Pinto, 2020. "Seeking for a climate change mitigation and adaptation nexus: Analysis of a long-term power system expansion," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 262(C).
    6. Joyce Nyuma Chivunga & Zhengyu Lin & Richard Blanchard, 2023. "Power Systems’ Resilience: A Comprehensive Literature Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(21), pages 1-31, October.
    7. Burillo, Daniel & Chester, Mikhail V. & Pincetl, Stephanie & Fournier, Eric D. & Reyna, Janet, 2019. "Forecasting peak electricity demand for Los Angeles considering higher air temperatures due to climate change," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 236(C), pages 1-9.
    8. Fang, Yiping & Wei, Yanqiang, 2013. "Climate change adaptation on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau: The importance of solar energy utilization for rural household," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 508-518.
    9. van Herten, Loes M. & Gunning-Schepers, Louise J., 2000. "Targets as a tool in health policy: Part I: lessons learned," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 1-11, August.
    10. Guerra, Omar J. & Tejada, Diego A. & Reklaitis, Gintaras V., 2019. "Climate change impacts and adaptation strategies for a hydro-dominated power system via stochastic optimization," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 233, pages 584-598.
    11. Manyena, Bernard & Machingura, Fortunate & O'Keefe, Phil, 2019. "Disaster Resilience Integrated Framework for Transformation (DRIFT): A new approach to theorising and operationalising resilience," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-1.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Joyce Nyuma Chivunga & Zhengyu Lin & Richard Blanchard, 2023. "Power Systems’ Resilience: A Comprehensive Literature Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(21), pages 1-31, October.
    2. Plaga, Leonie Sara & Bertsch, Valentin, 2023. "Methods for assessing climate uncertainty in energy system models — A systematic literature review," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 331(C).
    3. Figueiredo, Raquel & Nunes, Pedro & Brito, Miguel C., 2021. "The resilience of a decarbonized power system to climate variability: Portuguese case study," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 224(C).
    4. Samuel Asumadu Sarkodie & Maruf Yakubu Ahmed & Phebe Asantewaa Owusu, 2022. "Global adaptation readiness and income mitigate sectoral climate change vulnerabilities," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-17, December.
    5. He, Jiaming & Tan, Qinliang & Lv, Hanyu, 2025. "Data-driven climate resilience assessment for distributed energy systems using diffusion transformer and polynomial expansions," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 380(C).
    6. Marius Eugen Țiboacă-Ciupăgeanu & Dana Alexandra Țiboacă-Ciupăgeanu, 2024. "Optimal Substation Placement: A Paradigm for Advancing Electrical Grid Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(10), pages 1-14, May.
    7. Wadim Strielkowski & Dalia Streimikiene & Alena Fomina & Elena Semenova, 2019. "Internet of Energy (IoE) and High-Renewables Electricity System Market Design," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(24), pages 1-17, December.
    8. Pang, Mingyue & Zhang, Lixiao & Bahaj, AbuBakr S. & Xu, Kaipeng & Hao, Yan & Wang, Changbo, 2018. "Small hydropower development in Tibet: Insight from a survey in Nagqu Prefecture," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 81(P2), pages 3032-3040.
    9. Komerath, Narayanan M. & Deepak, Ravi, 2023. "A reversible mid-stratospheric architecture to reduce insolation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 348(C).
    10. Mujjuni, F. & Betts, T. & To, L.S. & Blanchard, R.E., 2021. "Resilience a means to development: A resilience assessment framework and a catalogue of indicators," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    11. Yusuke Toyoda, 2021. "Survey paper: achievements and perspectives of community resilience approaches to societal systems," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 705-756, October.
    12. Burillo, Daniel & Chester, Mikhail V. & Pincetl, Stephanie & Fournier, Eric, 2019. "Electricity infrastructure vulnerabilities due to long-term growth and extreme heat from climate change in Los Angeles County," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 943-953.
    13. Ali Dargahi & Khezr Sanjani & Morteza Nazari-Heris & Behnam Mohammadi-Ivatloo & Sajjad Tohidi & Mousa Marzband, 2020. "Scheduling of Air Conditioning and Thermal Energy Storage Systems Considering Demand Response Programs," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-13, September.
    14. Engler, John-Oliver & Kretschmer, Max-Friedemann & Rathgens, Julius & Ament, Joe A. & Huth, Thomas & von Wehrden, Henrik, 2024. "15 years of degrowth research: A systematic review," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    15. Ulaa AlHaddad & Abdullah Basuhail & Maher Khemakhem & Fathy Elbouraey Eassa & Kamal Jambi, 2023. "Towards Sustainable Energy Grids: A Machine Learning-Based Ensemble Methods Approach for Outages Estimation in Extreme Weather Events," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(16), pages 1-19, August.
    16. Yufeng Chen & Simin Shen & Chuwen Wang, 2025. "Climate risks and stock market volatility spillover: new insights from wavelet and causality methods," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 58(3), pages 1-32, June.
    17. Zhang, Hongyu & Deji, Wangzhen & Farinotti, Daniel & Zhang, Da & Huang, Junling, 2024. "The role of Xizang in China's transition towards a carbon-neutral power system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 313(C).
    18. Tian, Chuyin & Huang, Guohe & Xie, Yulei, 2021. "Systematic evaluation for hydropower exploitation rationality in hydro-dominant area: A case study of Sichuan Province, China," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 1096-1111.
    19. Amjath-Babu, T.S. & Sharma, Bikash & Brouwer, Roy & Rasul, Golam & Wahid, Shahriar M. & Neupane, Nilhari & Bhattarai, Utsav & Sieber, Stefan, 2019. "Integrated modelling of the impacts of hydropower projects on the water-food-energy nexus in a transboundary Himalayan river basin," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(C), pages 494-503.
    20. Khaleghian, Peyvand & Gupta, Monica Das, 2005. "Public management and the essential public health functions," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(7), pages 1083-1099, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:18:y:2025:i:11:p:2755-:d:1664575. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.