Commonwealth Edison prepared to provide reliable service throughout summer
Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) recently reported to the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) that it has taken steps to ensure reliable electric service for its customers through the warm season.
“Families, businesses, and other customers shouldn’t have to worry about their power going out at the times they need it most,” Terence R. Donnelly, executive vice president and chief operating officer of ComEd, said. “Building on the historic reliability our customers enjoy today, we’ve taken numerous actions to minimize the number of outages customers experience this summer and to ensure that we restore service as quickly and safely as possible when outages do occur.”
ComEd had a 99.98 percent reliability rate in 2017 and 3.2 million of the utility’s 4 million customers experienced one or no power outages, company leaders told the ICC. The company received the fewest complaints about service reliability and the lowest number of customers experience multiple outages of any year on record, they noted.
ComEd attributed its reliability performance primarily to the Smart Grid Law passed in Illinois in 2011, which enabled the company to invest $2.6 billion in upgrading its electric grid. ComEd also offers programs that provide incentives to customers to reduce energy use on days of peak demand.
In 2017, 46 percent fewer outages occurred, the company said, than in the years before the Smart Grid Law was passed, and outages that did occur were 46 percent shorter. Digital smart switches, which automatically reroute power around problem areas, helped ComEd avoid approximately 1.5 million customer outages in 2017.
ComEd representatives also reported to the ICC on recent investments, planning, and training to further bolster reliability, capacity, storm response and emergency preparedness.
