The network stress index for power grid resilience

Abstract

This paper presents the Network Stress Index (NSI) for power grid resilience, a transition-era diagnostic instrument for cross-national assessment of electricity-network stress across 40 jurisdictions, representing approximately 87% of global electricity consumption. The NSI is a transparent, weight-adjustable composite of five normalised dimensions: integration stress, investment gap, connection-queue ratio, SAIDI reliability, and network cost share, deployed as a deposited, citable interactive dashboard. It is offered as a practical diagnostic rather than a new theoretical framework. Its main observation is that, across high-income systems, integration stress and outage duration are weakly associated, so several jurisdictions conventionally regarded as well-managed (Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom) rank among the more stressed ones once integration and queue dimensions are measured, despite low SAIDI. In contrast, the highest-SAIDI systems (South Africa, Argentina, Brazil) face a distinct, statistically distinguishable challenge rooted in generation adequacy and network underinvestment. A regression of observed SAIDI on the structural dimensions reinforces this separation: outage duration is predicted by the investment-gap dimension but not by integration stress. By making the weighting explicit and user-adjustable, the framework aims to expose rather than conceal the normative choices any composite embeds, and to support the differentiation of network-investment priorities and the allocation of grid-related climate finance.