ComEd and Summit Ridge Energy opened a community solar development in ComEd’s service territory.
The nearly 2.5 MW Speedway Solar project 10 miles south of Joliet, Ill., will provide more than 350 ComEd customers with solar energy and savings on their energy bills.
The Speedway Solar project includes more than 2,300 solar panels and occupies 31 acres on West Sharp Road in Elwood, about 60 miles southwest of Chicago. It will enable ComEd customers who may not have the roof space or financial means to install their own solar energy generation system to use solar energy.
Community solar power subscribers earn credits on their monthly utility bills for their portion of the energy produced by the solar project. Energy generated by community solar flows to the electric grid to become part of the overall energy supply.
SRE is a commercial solar developer and owner-operator in Illinois, with an energy portfolio of more than 250 MWs across the state.
ComEd expects to have doubled the number of community solar projects interconnected to its electric grid to more than 150, serving about 36,000 customers. ComEd estimates that solar power on its grid, including rooftop and community solar systems, will grow five times from almost 650 MWs today to about 3,300 MWs by 2030.
In 2022, ComEd received a record-setting 19,292 applications from residential, commercial and industrial customers to connect solar panels and other distributed energy resources to ComEd’s grid, a 74 percent increase from the prior year.
