ComEd reports 85 percent of northern Illinois customers experienced at most one outage in 2022

Despite sometimes severe weather patterns, 2022 was, for many in northern Illinois, a year without electric troubles – according to ComEd, its investments in the power grid brought reliability that allowed nearly 3.5 million customers to avoid all but, at most, one outage last year.

This record reliability was the result of investments and improvements pursued since 2011. The company reported that overall reliability improved more than 80 percent in the intervening years, with more than 19 million power outages avoided and $3.3 billion saved.

“With growing concerns about carbon emissions and air pollution, we are living in a world that will be increasingly electric,” Terence Donnelly, president and COO of ComEd, said. “As people purchase more electric vehicles and appliances, and renewable energy like solar expands across our communities, we will continue to make necessary investments in our system to ensure we are ready to meet demand.”

With the effects of climate change only expected to worsen in the years to come and demand from electrification and other sources growing, ComEd is continuing full speed with its investment plans as well. In the recently filed multiyear grid and rate plans, the company announced it would continue upgrading and replacing poor-performing or obsolete cable and wood poles, pursuing tree management, using advanced analytics to prevent power outages and improve restoration, improving coordination with communities, and more.

On the clean energy side, ComEd predicted that solar power on its grid would grow from nearly 500 MW to 2,7000 MW by 2030 as applications for solar panel connections and other distributed energy resources from residential, commercial, and industrial customers surge. That will require both physical and digital infrastructure upgrades to address properly.

“As the needs and expectations of our customers evolve, the grid needs to evolve with them,” Donnelly said.