[The following is a paid advertisement.]

On June 21 powerful storms, including two tornadoes, struck ComEd’s service territory knocking out power to 440,000 customers.

ComEd’s call center responded to nearly 600,000 calls and Web site traffic was at an all-time high as customers reported their outages and checked to find out when power would be restored.

With more than 800 crews, working around the clock ComEd restored service to 90 percent of customers within the first 48 hours. Within three days, the company had restored power to virtually all customers, with some individual, isolated outages lingering into Saturday.

Power outages are more than just an inconvenience; they lower productivity of the region’s economy and cost money.

But what if smart grid technology had been in place?

o ComEd would have known customers were out of power without them having to call us.
o Technology would have pinpointed outages allowing us to dispatch crews more quickly to restore service.
o Digital automation would have rerouted power meaning fewer customers would have been seen outages, and
o Thousands of customers may have never experienced an outage.

Why wait to modernize our electric grid? The time to act is now.