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* 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.
posted by Rich Miller
Wednesday, Oct 3, 12 @ 1:26 pm
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“Your” General Assembly… bought and paid for by Com Ed.
Comment by Team America Wednesday, Oct 3, 12 @ 1:29 pm
FWIW, the ‘Smart Grid’ tech really does not make the delivery system more robust/resistant to outages.
It has the potential to dramatically improve the identification and response to outages (if nobody calls about outages, they don’t know). So the ’smart grid’ will allow then to organize and respond to outages in a far superior and much more organized process.
But it’s going to take a while to implement, and it’s damned expensive. But honestly (and it’s hard for me to admit this), it’s just not smart to spend lots and lots of $$$ upgrading the infrastructure out in the field and not implementing the necessary ’smart grid’ features out in the field at the same time.
Why not just do it once instead of (a) doing all the field upgrades for increased reliability, and then (b) going back out and doing a second set of upgrades on the exact same equipment. That’s certainly efficient - NOT.
Comment by Judgment Day Wednesday, Oct 3, 12 @ 1:45 pm
I think it is sadder in a way I am not surprised ComED wrote the OP ED for a state rep….
Comment by OneMan Wednesday, Oct 3, 12 @ 2:03 pm
Like The Terminator, they will be back.
Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Wednesday, Oct 3, 12 @ 3:03 pm
When voting for state legislator, it probably would be more helpful for me if newspapers gave up the R/D identification after politicians names and just made clear whether ComEd owned them or not.
Comment by hisgirlfriday Wednesday, Oct 3, 12 @ 3:11 pm
Slightly o/t, but AA wonders how often the power goes out at POTUS’ home not too far from 4500 S. Drexel.
Comment by Arthur Andersen Wednesday, Oct 3, 12 @ 3:21 pm
What a bad news day for ole ComEd. Between the ICC ruling and “email gate” it’s pretty clear if we could not see it before that SB1652 was really about getting ComEd higher profits.
The south side vs northside outages demonstrates that Instead of actually improving their system they have been too busy this summer fighting for higher profits, ghost writing newspaper columns, creating fancy iPhone outage map apps.
Maybe with all the new legislators coming to Springfield next year we will finally see ComEd being held accountable.
Comment by Anonymous Wednesday, Oct 3, 12 @ 3:59 pm
Uhhh, rich, “the ICC has stymied com ed’s smart grid plans.” Be careful who you get your info from on this topic. This is about corporate greed, nothing more. The smart grid hostage taking is com ed’s doing, not the icc’s.
Comment by dang Wednesday, Oct 3, 12 @ 4:17 pm
As one of the victims, I learned how electrical grids were built out during the 2006 twin tornados. A CWLP design engineer friend explained how they had built their system, why I was out for an extended period, and why my next door neighbor had power back several days before I did.
Every system is a bit different but electric system reliability comes from building a redundant and interlocked grid … which does not necessarily require a smart grid (but smart does make it easier to monitor / manage). Done properly, you can limit a lot of the “nuisance outages” (squirrel shorting out line, wreck taking out a power pole, etc.) to a one or two square block area. But it requires some engineers to design it and the permission to spent a fair amount of money implementing it. Without a close look at Com-Ed’s design and the outage causes, you can’t really say if they are skipping maintenance or just suffering from different designs in different areas.
Comment by RNUG Wednesday, Oct 3, 12 @ 4:30 pm
@dang is right. The case the ICC ruled on was about formula rates (pensions, executive bonuses, etc) and the decision does nothing to delay “smart grid.” It just means ComEd got caught trying to get $100M that wasnt theirs from their customers. With consumers and businesses struggling - the ICC should be praised for protecting us all from ComEd’s gouging.
Comment by SportShoz Wednesday, Oct 3, 12 @ 5:16 pm
@hisgirlfriday -
That was the most hilarious thing I’ve read on Capitolfax in awhile, and you’ve got some still competition here.
YDD
Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Wednesday, Oct 3, 12 @ 7:08 pm