ComEd is providing residential and small-business customers with personalized reliability reports with their March bills. This effort is part of ComEd's attempt to meet customers' energy needs and show the impact ComEd's energy investments have had on electric service. This is the first year small-business customers with a single location and the third consecutive year residential customers will receive the reports.
The reports offer customers an individualized look at their service reliability from the previous year. Customers will see their individual reliability information partly because of upgrades to the grid — and the installation of smart meters in particular. The reports show customers' overall reliability and detailed information for any outages they experienced that lasted more than one minute. This data includes the specific date and cause of the outage, including the amount of time it took before power was restored.
"The last thing we want customers to worry about during the COVID-19 pandemic is whether their home or business will have power," said Terry Donnelly, ComEd president and COO. "That's why we're committed to providing customers with safe and reliable energy when they need it the most. This commitment includes ongoing investments we've made in a more resilient power grid to ensure that families and businesses can count on reliable power as they navigate extreme weather events alongside the pandemic."
The power of these investments was evident in August when an unprecedented derecho storm and tornadoes interrupted power to more than 800,000 customers. If not for these investments, this storm would have caused nearly twice as many families and businesses to lose power, a two-week restoration, and millions of additional dollars in costs.
Since starting smart grid investments in 2012, ComEd customers have been spared more than 16 million service interruptions partly because of smart grid and system improvements, including distribution automation or smart switches that reroute power in real time around potential problem areas. The avoided outages have resulted in US$2.7 billion in societal savings, including avoided business losses.
Residential customers, as well as small-business customers with a single location, will receive their reports with their March 2021 bills if they were customers of record at their current location as of Jan. 1, 2020, and have not stopped service with ComEd by the time they receive their March bill. Customers who receive their bills electronically will receive an email link to their report.
For information on what ComEd is doing to improve reliability, visit here.
