Municipalities want greater ComEd regulation
Representatives of the Northwest Municipal Conference Tuesday announced their plan to repair perceived problems with ComEd's power outage response as evidenced by last summer's storms.
But ComEd officials said the plan only shows that everyone's goals are the same.
“It really represents an alignment on what we all want,” said Terence Donnelly, ComEd's executive vice president of operations. “We all want fewer outages and better communication.”
The Northwest Municipal Conference, which represents 41 North and Northwest suburban towns, recently drafted a plan outlining proposed legislative and regulatory actions to raise ComEd outage responses to a satisfactory level.
The next step, according to Executive Director Mark Fowler, is for state Sen. Susan Garrett to include the plan's suggestions in a bill she'll be introducing at the upcoming veto session in Springfield.
Donnelly said that while ComEd agrees in principle with the plan's suggestions for improvement, he couldn't speak to what the company's response might be to legislation that isn't even drafted yet.
He believes ComEd's dedication to smart grid technology and the financial incentives for it in existing Senate Bill 1652 already pave the way for significant improvement.
But Northwest Municipal Conference Policy Director Larry Bury said existing legislation doesn't go far enough to ensure where and when ComEd is going to make its technology investments.
Fowler and Bury said this summer's storms didn't so much reveal new problems with ComEd as show that earlier promises of improvement hadn't been delivered on.
Greater transparency, accountability and communication are needed and that's why greater regulation of the utility is being recommended, they said.
Evidence from other electricity providers in other parts of the country demonstrates that better service is achievable, they added.
Donnelly said he isn't sure other areas of the country are any better at avoiding or responding to outages. He said that ComEd has hosted a summit for various power providers to learn from each other.
Despite the fact this has been an issue which literally comes and goes with the weather, Fowler said it's currently the municipal conference's highest priority and he expects it to remain so until it's resolved.
Because the committee that drafted the plan received no input from ComEd, how long the implementation would take even with ComEd's full cooperation is unknown, Fowler and Bury said.
Among the problems municipalities faced last summer was having their own public safety workers tied up with keeping an eye on downed power lines until ComEd repair crews arrived, they said. This kept emergency responders from getting to other types of calls in some cases.
A copy of the conference's plan can be found at nwmc-cog.org.