Fundamentals of Power System Resilience: Concepts, Models, and Decision-Making Under Extreme Events

Power systems are being reshaped by decarbonization, digitalization, and high shares of renewables. At the same time, increasingly severe extreme conditions expose the limits of traditional reliability frameworks, calling for risk-aware, resilience-oriented approaches to address high-impact, low-probability (HILP) events. In this context, this paper presents a comprehensive overview of the foundations of power system resilience. It revisits the transition from reliability to resilience, formalizes key concepts and metrics, and introduces advanced approaches for resilience assessment, including fragility-based modeling, cascading failure analysis, and tail-risk indicators. The paper further examines resilience-oriented investment planning, operational strategies across all event phases, and the role of distributed energy resources, microgrids, and cybersecurity. The analysis highlights that resilience extends reliability by focusing on extreme conditions, fundamentally reshaping decision-making and requiring coordinated strategies across infrastructure, operation, and governance.