“We live in a complex world. Anyone with a stake in managing some aspect of that world will
benefit from a richer understanding of resilience and its implications” (Walker, Brian /Salt, David, Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World,
Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006)

The transformation of the socio-technical energy supply system is a prime example of an
enormously complex process. Besides the development and integration of new technologies
and system components related to cope with the increasing share of variable renewable
energy sources, issues regarding the system structure and behaviour are becoming ever
more relevant: the overcome of the one dimensionality of the generation – consumption
architecture of the system, including sector coupling strategies, or the participation of actors
and their interest, will strongly shape the future energy system. Each of these issues will take
their share to increase the network character and complexity of the system. The increase
and format of complexity is strongly related to higher uncertainty and risk, requiring different
analysis, controlling and management strategies. Resilience approaches, trying to analyze
the response of such a complex system to different stress situations, may help to tackle
some of these requirements.
The lecture series “Resilient Energy Systems” provides the theoretical background for
understanding main concepts and interdisciplinary scientific methods to apply the concept of
resilience to energy systems. In order to set the scene a sound and comprising introduction
into its roots and different fundamental concepts for understanding current resilience
research is given. This is followed by lectures from different experts, focusing each on a
particular dimension, method or application context within the field of resilience research.
The topics covered by the expert lectures range from electric grid flexibility requirements to
risk absorption mechanisms, vulnerability analysis to participation and governance issues,
ciber-resilience research or modelling approaches for grid resilience. Experts from the
University of Oldenburg such as Prof. Ulrike Feudel, Prof. Joachim Peinke, Prof. Sebastian
Lehnhoff or Alexandra Unger as well as external experts like Dr. Urte Brandt (DLR-VE), Dr.
Oriol Raventos (DLR-VE) or Mariela Tapia (University of Bremen) are some of the inspiring
speakers participating in the lecture series.
Each expert lecture is followed by a related seminar in order dive deeper into the particular
resilience aspect and facilitate the active engagement of the students.
The whole course is composed of the lectures and the seminars, corresponding to 6 CP
(Lecture (in StudIP: 5.06.606a) & Seminar (in StudIP: 5.06.606b) – 180 h workload)
Main learning outcomes:

• Understand different conceptional resilience approaches in the context of RE systems

development

• Understand strengths and blackspots in the application of resilience or different

concepts related to it (e.g. robustness, vulnerability) to the energy system

• Understand interdisciplinary dependences and concepts required for designing

resilient RE systems: address technical and non technical dimensions of resiliency
assessment (economy, participation, …)

• Get to know different methods and metrics for assessing/quantifying the concept of

resilience for RE systems design

• Understand and critically argue on the suitability of methods for resilience

assessment in the context of RE systems