Converge Strategies Service

Resilience Assessments and Exercises

Areas of Impact

Department Of Defense Energy Resilience

In Short

How do you know if your emergency plan actually works?

We run exercises where we turn off the power to find out.

Why It Matters

  • Critical facilities, from military bases to hospitals, have plans in place for when the grid goes down.
  • It’s one thing to have a plan, and another thing to know if the plan works.
  • Tabletop exercises test resilience plans by simulating the consequences of long-duration power outages. Black start exercises go one step further by physically turning off the power to see how (and whether) critical missions can operate when the grid goes dark.

What It Is

We helped develop the tabletop and black start exercises used by the U.S. Department of Defense to test and validate energy resilience at military installations.

We’ve delivered tabletop and black start exercises in partnership with the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy, and helped identify high-priority investments based on the outcomes.

Our Impact

We helped pioneer energy resilience tabletop and black start exercises at more than 10 military installations across the country. 

We designed and delivered train-the-trainer courses to increase the number of organizations that can do the work.

Each military department is now required by law to conduct black start exercises each year through 2027.

Our Partners

The exercises were funded by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and by the military services. Converge Strategies worked in partnership with MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Resources

Here are the reports, articles, blogs, or any public deliverables produced because of this work.