ComEd Smart Grid Takes a Little Chill Out of Winter
March 18 2019 - 2:59PM
Business Wire
System improvements help avoid more than
280,000 outages during winter storms
In a winter that has seemed to last forever, ComEd’s smart grid
improvements have ensured that fewer people felt Mother Nature’s
effects. New technologies, like distribution automation, or “smart
switches,” that reroute power around trouble spots helped avoid
more than 280,000 customer interruptions for families and
businesses during storms this season.
This winter has been especially challenging, with prolonged
periods of subzero temperatures and more ice storms than in recent
years. During the polar vortex, the Chicago area experienced 52
straight hours of subzero temperatures, the fourth-longest stretch
on record, and several daily records for cold temperatures. The
post-Thanksgiving storm brought a combination of ice, high winds
and sustained below-freezing temperatures not seen in the Chicago
area in more than 20 years. On average, more than 80 percent of the
530,000 ComEd customers who lost power during these winter storms
were restored within 24 hours.
“When we began our grid modernization work in 2012, we made a
promise to bring improved reliability to our customers,” said Joe
Dominguez, CEO of ComEd. “We kept that promise, setting reliability
records while keeping energy bills flat. Our customers have seen
the benefits this winter as we continue to bring more improvements
to the system.”
ComEd started its smart grid investments following the passage
of the Energy Infrastructure Modernization Act by the Illinois
General Assembly in 2012. Since then, customers have enjoyed 45
percent fewer power outages on average. During that time, the
company has avoided more than 11 million individual customer
interruptions, due in part to smart grid and system improvements.
The avoided outages have resulted in $2.1 billion in societal
savings. Additionally, in 2018 customers saw record reliability in
the city of Chicago, where the frequency of outages has been
reduced by nearly 60 percent since 2012.
In the last 10 years, the average ComEd residential customer
bill has remained steady. In June 2008, the average monthly bill
was approximately $85; in January 2019, the average bill was
approximately $83.
ComEd is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC),
a Fortune 100 energy company with approximately 10 million
electricity and natural gas customers – the largest number of
customers in the U.S. ComEd powers the lives of more than 4 million
customers across northern Illinois, or 70 percent of the state’s
population. For more information visit ComEd.com and connect with
the company on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
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