* Today’s Sun-Times headline “South Side left without power more often than North Side” probably wasn’t much of a shock (pardon the pun) to most folks. People would likley just assume that the black-dominated South Side would be more likely to get the shaft…

The utility’s listing of each individual power outage in its annual reliability report showed the North Side had 15 wards with the smallest level of power outages, according to a Sun-Times breakdown of the numbers.

But on the South Side, only two wards made it into the lowest category of the Sun-Times analysis: wards that had fewer than 64,000 customer-hours of outages in 2011. […]

Shuman’s business and Lewis’ home are in the 3rd Ward, which runs along either side of King Drive and includes parts of Bronzeville, Grand Boulevard, Fuller Park and Kenwood. ComEd reported nearly 158,000 customer-hours without power in the ward in 2011, the fourth worst total in the city.

By comparison, the 43rd Ward’s Lincoln Park neighborhood on the North Side had only 57,000 customer hours of outages.

Qiana Acklin, 33, lives in the 4500 block of South Drexel Boulevard in the nearby 4th Ward, which endured 145,000 customer-hours without electricity.

“I think maybe it has to do with race, that plays a factor,” she said when told of the disparity between her 4th Ward and most North Side wards.

* But is race the biggest factor?…

The 3rd and 4th wards are majority black, but white wards on the South Side were also hit hard. The 19th Ward, which covers parts of Beverly and Mount Greenwood, is 66 percent white and had 162,000 customer-hours of outages. Whites are the largest group in the 23rd Ward, which includes parts of Garfield Ridge. That ward had 146,000 customer-hours of outages.

The 41st Ward in the far northwest corner of the city was atypical for the North Side in that it posted the highest outage customer-hours in the whole city: 283,000. This was mostly due to storms that hit the Edison Park and Norwood Park neighborhoods in July 2011.

* Or is it the number of trees and above-ground lines?…

“The South Side tends to have much more overhead [cable] exposure,” said Terry Donnelly, chief operating officer and executive vice president of the utility. “The North Side tends to have more underground conductors and the South Side tends to have more tree density.” […]

Suburbs, with even more above-ground power lines and more trees to knock them down, suffered more frequent and longer outages than the city.

Areas in wealthy North Shore suburbs were harder hit in 2011 than middle- and working-class south and southwestern suburbs.

Highland Park, for example — with a population of 29,000, smaller than any Chicago ward — had 305,000 customer-hours of outages.

Statistics can be manipulated to say lots of things, so I don’t think the article really answered the question.

* But, at the least, ComEd needs to vastly improve its infrastructure. And on that topic, the company’s plans to roll out a “Smart Grid” have been stymied by the Illinois Commerce Commission. As the Tribune notes, the ICC won’t have annual control over the company’s rates once it finalizes how certain returns on investments are calculated, and the Commission has been making it very tough on ComEd, although it gave in a bit after pressure from the General Assembly…

The Illinois Commerce Commission on Wednesday gave Commonwealth Edison a mixed decision on recovering the cost of ComEd’s smart-grid infrastructure project. The ICC allowed ComEd’s way of figuring its pension assets, but denied both interest rate costs and rate base that ComEd wanted to recover the costs of the project.

ComEd spokeswoman Judy Rader said ComEd still needs to review the order. But ComEd spokespeople in earlier statements have said the utility will appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court if it decides it cannot recover enough costs to proceed.

The ICC previously approved a rate that ComEd claimed was inadequate. In part, the ICC ruled that the electric utility can’t earn a rate of return on a pension asset that isn’t fully funded.

ComEd had proposed a decrease in its electricity rates totaling $40 million to $50 million, but because of the pension issue, the ICC decided May 29 to cut customers’ rates by four times that, for a total of $168.6 million.

More…

The ICC did not rule in ComEd’s favor regarding two other items that also affect the returns ComEd will receive on its infrastructure build out.

Instead, it offered a compromise that involves archaic technicalities that have to do with interest rates the company will receive and how the ICC will determine how costs are determined.

And…

Asked whether ComEd would urge state lawmakers to force the ICC to go along with the utility on the two remaining disputed issues, [ComEd spokeswoman Judy Rader] said, “It’s too early to say.”

It’s never “too early to say” on this topic. You can safely bet ComEd will be back in the GA with this issue very soon.

* And it’s a friendly General Assembly at that…

An email shows that the utility giant ComEd wrote a column for state Rep. Charles Jefferson to submit to a local newspaper under his own name.

The Rockford Register-Star ( http://bit.ly/ODiNyJ ) reported Wednesday that Jefferson sent in a 420-word column urging state regulators to reverse a rate cut that he says would impede ComEd’s efforts to modernize its power grid.

An email accidentally forwarded to the newspaper showed ComEd had written the column. The company asked Jefferson to submit it “at your earliest possible convenience” if he agreed with the content.

Oops.