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* Yesterday’s hearing of the House Public Utilities Committee in the northern suburbs turned into a six-hour hostile roast of ComEd…
Heckled by its customers and berated by lawmakers, ComEd officials are promising a brighter tomorrow for thousands of customers kept in the dark by this summer’s record outages.
Faster response times based on ComEd’s proposed “smart grid” should help, consumer advocates agree. But vows of future improvements did nothing for those who showed up at a hearing Tuesday demanding more immediate progress and compensation. […]
At one point, the committee’s chairman, Rep. Thomas Holbrook, D-Belleville, tried to calm things down, saying, “Put down your torches and your pitchforks.”
Jamming the Highland Park Country Club, many seethed as ComEd officials talked about how this summer’s wild weather caused the outages. Ten significant storms hit the area with record or near-record extremes of wind, rain and heat, resulting in an unprecedented losses of power affecting 2.4 million customers.
* Opponents of ComEd’s smart grid/rate hike bill couldn’t have asked for a more perfect response from nature. This summer’s storms have hammered ComEd’s customers with multiple, often lengthy outages. ComEd has flooded the region with technicians from all over the country. This ComEd press release sums up the company’s outlook on life…
Appearing today before a House Public Utilities hearing in Highland Park, Ill., ComEd President and Chief Operating Officer Anne Pramaggiore and other members of ComEd’s executive team highlighted lessons learned from the utility’s summer storm restoration efforts and the steps it is taking to enhance its storm response, noting that essential electric grid modernization will be needed to meet the increasing needs of customers.
“Our crews did an outstanding job restoring customers’ power this summer under extremely difficult conditions but these storms have brought two major issues to the forefront,” said Pramaggiore. “We need to enhance our storm response performance, as well as make the investment in the tools and technologies that the electric grid requires to operate at peak effectiveness.”
* You’d be hard-pressed, however, to find customers who think the company did an “outstanding job” of restoring power…
State Rep. Elaine Nekritz, D-57th, of Northbrook questioned ComEd’s maintenance and reliability practices.
“Your maintenance budget this year is lower than last year. If you cut your maintenance, then your service reliability will continue to decrease,” she said.
Nekritz pointed out that ComEd has decreased its tree-trimmers this year by 22 percent.
“Less maintenance and a decreasing staff will not meet our needs. It’s people, not smart meters, that will make the difference in serving customers,” she said.
* Fox Chicago reported “booing and hissing” during Pramaggiore’s testimony…
“I had power companies from all over the world tell me that ComEd is a joke, that we are a third world country up here,” said Janet Much.
ComEd wants the state legislature to sign off on a rate increase to fund a smart grid program, which they said would diminish the number of power outages.
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said the bill that is before the legislature does not create enough accountability for ComEd and said she intends to question the company intensely about power outages in her municipality.
* Lots of local officials testified, and all appeared furious…
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said the city’s police station lacked power for four days after the storm and the fire station had no power for three days. Some residents reported downed power lines on their driveways that were not removed for several days.
“Public safety was at risk,” she said. “Illinois residents and villages expect more from ComEd.”
Highland Park Village Manager David Limardi said local residents disposed of “22 tons of spoiled food that we had to pick up” after the July 11 storm because of lengthy outages.
Bannockburn Village Manager Maria Lasday said the village had to provide policing where a downed power line was lying on a main road for a couple days. Eventually the village had to hire an electrician to remove it.
“It is unfair for ComEd to expect communities to provide policing where there are downed power lines or where streetlights are not working,” she said. “If ComEd is unable to move the power line or provide electrical service to the streetlight, then ComEd should be required to reimburse communities for their police services.”
* And some have decided to leave altogether…
A growing number of Chicago suburbs, including well-known municipalities like Oak Park and Oak Brook, are cutting the cord with Commonwealth Edison Co. and inking money-saving electricity deals with alternative suppliers on behalf of their residents and small businesses.
The latest to defect is west suburban North Aurora, which knocked 26% off ComEd’s price of electricity in a two-year contract with Integrys Energy Services, a sister company of Peoples Gas. Ten other small, far-flung suburbs, including south suburban New Lenox and west suburban Sugar Grove, have signed deals in recent weeks providing similar savings.
Some 20 Chicago-area municipalities have won voter approval in referendums to solicit bids from power suppliers. Together they represent about 90,000 ComEd customers, about 3% of the utility’s 3.8 million customers.
But with bigger cities interested in moving forward, as much as 20% of ComEd’s customers could move to alternative suppliers through municipal contracting, said Mark Pruitt, executive director of the Illinois Power Agency, which buys electricity on behalf of the state’s utility customers.
posted by Rich Miller
Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 10:12 am
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All things considered I have to say I am glad I have underground service.
Comment by OneMan Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 10:25 am
I’m sorry, what police dept doesn’t have a generator? You mean Highland park can’t afford a basic gas fired generator to keep emergency services running. Sorry, that’s not a com ed issue. that is bad planning on the village. Com ed may have screwed up, and I’m not a fan, but give me a break. After all the lessons from 911, the tornadoes down south, and Katrina, some of these local govt. can’t handle a power outage? what happens when we have a real disaster? Is there entire EMS plan the phone number to the Natl. guard?
Comment by frustrated GOP Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 10:26 am
We’re the last wave of rate increases to improve reliability?
Does Comed have evidence that reliability improved after those rate increases?
Did corporate profits increase? Executive salaries?
Here’s what I suspect Comed increased rates for reliability last time, but didn’t sufficiently increase investment in infrastructure to improve reliability. However, a bunch of that money did go to executives and shareholders.
If this is the case, Comed doesn’t need more money for reliability. It’s already been paid and failed to deliver. Time for Comed to cut the salaries of execs and reduce shareholder dividends and put the money into improving reliability.
Comment by Carl Nyberg Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 10:27 am
Those same Highland Park peasants with torches and pitchforks completed a coup when they discovered that their local Park District Board gave three Distirct executives nearly $700,000 in bonuses while paying one of them $185,120 for no work and signing over an SUV to him as he left his position.
Comment by Quinn T. Sential Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 10:30 am
God Bless CWLP
Comment by D.P. Gumby Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 10:30 am
Amen Gumby. When the tornado(s) hit Spfld several years ago, I was without power for a whole five hours. While they can be a pain in the a**, I would take CWLP over Com Ed anyday.
Comment by Anon from SI Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 10:53 am
I dread ever having to leave the CWLP service area for a different job. The rates are ‘in the basement’ compared to ComEd and the service is fantastic.
Comment by How Ironic Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 10:56 am
Gumby & Anon from SI,
CWLP is good and I would hate to not have them but they aren’t perfect. We were w/o power 5 days at one house and 12 days at the other after the twin tornadoes. In fairness, CWLP worked in from the edges and the one house (12 days) was right dead in the center of the destruction. The other house (5 days) was because the out of town crew didn’t understand they hadn’t fixed the entire street and moved on too quickly. But I’ll still take CWLP over the other service providers I’ve had before, both rate-wise and service-wise.
Comment by Retired Non-Union Guy Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 11:09 am
Come election time, all of those folks should punish the lawmakers who earlier this year voted for the Com-Ed rate increase.
Higher rates for lousy service. Crazy.
Comment by just sayin' Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 11:13 am
To be accurate, Rich, Aurora and Oak Park aren’t getting rid of ComEd for their electrical service (the distribution of the electricity to the user which is what ComEd is responsible for and is being discussed here), they are just buying the actual power from one of the many retail electricity suppliers out there. Most large entities do this already because you can get better rates than the ComEd standard rate.
Anyone can now get their power from one of those companies (Spark, Integrys, etc.), but it still get delivered to your house through Comed’s distribution lines that are subject to storms.
Comment by George Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 11:16 am
SmartGrid does little to nothing to improve reliability. It does, however, allow quicker identification of problems so they can be resolved in a more timely fashion.
That said, ComEd has apparently made a business decision by reducing the money spent on maintenance, and figured that it is cheaper (i.e. more profitable) to deal with outages compared to maintaining the infrastructure.
ComEd will not reimburse customers when outages occur, saying that since you aren’t using power, you aren’t being charged. Balderdash. Comcast, for all its faults and foibles, will provide rebates to their customers when outages occur. I propose that ComEd rebate customers for each outage, and for each day of longer outages. Something like $25 for any outage longer than 30 minutes, then $15 per day thereafter, to be credited automatically to the customers bill. This would provide the incentive to maintain lines to minimize outages, and to shorten outages that occur.
Comment by Cincinnatus Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 11:17 am
===SmartGrid does little to nothing to improve reliability===
Not totally true. They can reroute power with a better grid.
Comment by Rich Miller Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 11:18 am
Cinci - a key point here: “Smart Grid” can do a lot to improve reliability. If you are referring to just smart meters, though, you are correct.
One of the big issues is that a real implementation of Smart Grid is a lot more than just smart meters in every home.
If you have smart switches and a looped or network distribution system, you can reroute power around downed power lines instantaneously.
You can distribute power generation out into the system so that you aren’t dependent on a single power source and line coming into your neighborhood.
Electronic meters are not the end-all be-all magical wunderkind of a smart grid. It really is a system-wide investment that needs to be made.
Comment by George Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 11:24 am
SmartSwitches have already been installed in some areas, Oakbrook comes to mind. They do not need the SmartGrid proposal to do this work. ComEd has sufficient tools and data to install these devices today if they wanted to. This reinforces my argument that they have made a business decision to ignore routine upgrades to the system, they get plenty of money for such routine maintenance and upgrades from their current high prices.
Comment by Cincinnatus Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 11:44 am
I am not convinced that a “smart grid” will be any better than the existing “dumb grid”.
There is nothing faster to report a power outage that an irate person on the telephone.
Given the state of computer security, can somebody truly tell me that a “smart grid” will be secure against hackers? So rather than outages caused by bad weather, we will have outages caused by people, bent over computers, intent on evil doings.
Comment by Huh? Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 11:56 am
Cinci - Last I checked you pay a flat fee for cable and Internet each month, it’s not usage based. You shouldn’t be reimbursed for power you’re not using or being charged for when outages occur. That said, there is a flat facility charge on your power bill each month, and I’d fully support a reimbursement of a portion of that based on the outage length.
Also, smart grid won’t do anything to prevent a tree falling on your line, but it can absolutely do a great deal to reroute power so that the outage is contained to a smaller area. Some rural areas with single sources won’t be helped much, but areas with potential redundancy could see outage occurrences and durations drop dramatically.
In short, I know you hate anything that smacks of green or progress, but I expect a little more out of fellow UI engineers.
Comment by Small Town Liberal Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 12:42 pm
“what happens when we have a real disaster?”
Mark Kirk will put on his favorite superhero costume and save everyone, while getting a cozy campfire ready, cooking up a gourmet meal for the entire town on a Coleman, and reading a children’s story near the campfire to put the children to bed.
Comment by Anonymous Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 12:55 pm
STL,
I think that SmartGrid is being used as an excuse to relieve ComEd of responsibility for maintenance of their distribution system. Just because something is a new “bright” idea, doesn’t make it progress.
Comment by Cincinnatus Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 12:57 pm
- I think that SmartGrid is being used as an excuse to relieve ComEd of responsibility for maintenance of their distribution system. -
Oh, I think ComEd’s proposal is just an excuse to get around the ICC and get automatic rate increases. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not on ComEd’s side. But smart grid is being pushed nation wide, and it will have a positive impact on consumers as well as the economy. It’s time we address our crumbling infrastructure, and it’s going to involve government and private industry cooperation.
Comment by Small Town Liberal Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 1:14 pm
I should note that is doesn’t necessarily require a “smart grid” to provide reliability, just some smart design engineers. CWLP does it the old fashioned way with a dumb, twin feed, redundant supply grid. For example, my block actually has two feeds into it, one at each end of an alley; I only lose power if both lines are cut off .. this is the way it was designed. Barring a tornado taking out both lines (it did happen), the most we ever see is a flicker from one of the feeds dropping out. It might have cost more to build in the short run but its proven its worth in the long run. It lets CWLP limit repair outages by isolating very small portions of the distribution network; the only other time I’ve had an outage is when the actual transformer servicing my house had to be repaired.
Comment by Retired Non-Union Guy Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 1:15 pm
And also remember, by their own admission, SmartGrid will only help with about 15% of the outages…
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-comed-promises-brighter-tomorrow-after-feeling-the-heat-20110817,0,6341994.story?track=rss
Comment by Cincinnatus Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 1:59 pm
-Opponents of ComEd’s smart grid/rate hike bill couldn’t have asked for a more perfect response from nature. This summer’s storms have hammered ComEd’s customers with multiple, often lengthy outages-
You could also say God has taken a side.
Comment by Dave V Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 2:24 pm
“All things considered I have to say I am glad I have underground service.”
My “underground” service was out for 41 hours. Now I have a propane powered generator sitting in my garage. Never again.
Comment by wishbone Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 8:56 pm
–Jamming the Highland Park Country Club, many seethed as ComEd officials talked about how this summer’s wild weather caused the outages–
You’ve got a $2 million house, you pay up the wazoo in property taxes and you have no power for a week at a time.
They’re lucky it was only pitchforks and torches.
The same thing is going on in River Forest. Somebody sneezes and the power is out for days.
Comment by wordslinger Wednesday, Aug 17, 11 @ 9:58 pm