Illinois utility provider ComEd is celebrating a major company milestone, delivering 65,286 MWh of energy savings to its customers last year. The achievement, announced on Monday, marks a key step in the company’s mission to advance voltage optimization (VO), surpassing annual savings goals by 6%.

ComEd notes that last year’s savings are enough to power 8,900 homes for a year. As an energy efficiency solution, VO fine-tunes the voltage supply to reduce power usage and lower electricity bills.

Integrated into ComEd’s smart grid, the technology uses advanced software and control systems to regulate voltage at the feeder. This approach reportedly minimizes energy losses while maintaining the power levels necessary to provide safe and reliable electricity to its customers.

“VO is contributing to the improved operational efficiency of the distribution grid, and the avoided energy costs are creating meaningful dollar savings for multiple customer classes,” said David Perez, executive vice president and chief operating officer at ComEd, in a statement. “What began as an energy efficiency study quickly ramped up to a utility-scale effort to integrate an intelligent preventive maintenance program.”

About 3% of ComEd’s voltage has been lowered following the integration of VO, producing annual energy savings of up to 2% for the average customer. As a result, ComEd states that customer lights and appliances run more efficiently.

In 2025, these savings were reportedly equivalent to avoiding 43,682 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. ComEd upgraded 16 substations that same year, bringing the total number of units participating in the VO program to 292, with 245 substations operating full time.

Between 2018 and 2025, ComEd states that investments in the VO program, which was established by the Future Energy Jobs Act enacted by the Illinois General Assembly in 2016, were approximately $550 million toward deployment. The program, only slated to run until 2028, has been extended through 2031.

That is when all of the hardware and software components part of the VO initiative should be fully deployed across ComEd's territory, aligning with Illinois' regulatory Multi-Year Integrated Grid Plans (MYGP).

Once fully implemented, ComEd projects that roughly 3,100 feeders and 400 substations configured to the VO program will reduce annual energy consumption by up to 1,450 GWh, benefiting over 3 million ComEd customers.