In a report to the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC), ComEd officials announced that its power system reliability in 2016 was its best on record and that the energy company was well positioned to meet the demands of the region’s summer weather in 2017. In 2016, ComEd customers experienced a 99.98 percent reliability rate as well as a 15 percent reduction in the frequency of outages compared to 2015. This was ComEd’s best performance ever and among the best in class of all large utilities according to Electric Benchmarking. Since investments began in 2012, frequency of outages has been reduced by nearly 44 percent and the duration of outages has been reduced by 45 percent. Smart grid investments have led to nearly 3 million avoided customer interruptions, eliminated the need for more than 63 million manual meter readings, and led to $1.4 billion in societal savings.

“With the support and oversight of the ICC, we have delivered on the promises made through the Smart Grid bill,” said Terence R. Donnelly, executive vice-president and chief operating officer of ComEd. “On a daily basis and during storms, our customers are seeing less interruption in their lives and their business operations.” In their report today, officials outlined ongoing storm process review and improvement as a driver of overall performance improvement during storms. In addition, emergency drills, equipment readiness, and flood mitigations plans were noted as contributors to summer storm readiness. ComEd has also put into place programs to help lower demand on peak energy days. Included in this is Peak Time Savings, which allows customers to earn credit by using less energy during specific days and hours. More than 230,000 customers are enrolled in the program and saved more than $867,000 in 2016. “In 2017, we are entering the home stretch of much of our smart grid work – providing our customers one of the smartest, most resilient grids in the country,” said Donnelly.