ComEd pushes for Quinn override
Top ComEd officials said Thursday that a changing political climate could help them overcome Gov. Pat Quinn’s rejection of legislation that would lead to likely rate hikes and an improved electric grid.
They also said substantial changes have been made to the legislation that are intended to address the concerns of Quinn and other critics.
ComEd President Anne Pramaggiore said summer suburban storms in particular could leave lawmakers wanting new technology that could better detect and repair blackouts in short order.
She said those dayslong blackouts were tough on residents, who now feel the effects of lost electricity more than ever before because of their increasing dependence on electronic technologies.
“Customers are much more dependent on the grid than they ever were,” Pramaggiore said in a meeting with the Daily Herald editorial board.
Pramaggiore acknowledged the blackouts and the long time it took to fix them were tough on the company, too.
“It was a really tough summer for us,” she said.
ComEd’s push for the legislation comes after Quinn vetoed the plan this summer, and lawmakers could try override him when they meet in Springfield later this month.
The proposal would put the company before state utility regulators every year to weigh rate increases that would back the company’s investment in new grid technology. Those upgrades could, besides helping identify outages and respond to them more quickly, help consumers better monitor their individual power use and control their energy costs.
ComEd has estimated the rate hikes to support the upgrades will mean $3 more a month in delivery charges for the average customer.
Those increases have drawn loud protest from Quinn, who toured several downstate cities Thursday to decry the plan and urge lawmakers not to override him. “This is the biggest consumer fight we’ve had in Illinois in years and years, in a generation,” Quinn said at one of the stops. “We’ve got to sustain that veto.”
Pramaggiore and other company officers have taken issue with Quinn railing against the plan for what he describes as annual rate hikes that would be “automatic.”
Since it first proposed the smart grid proposal, the company says it’s made 40 changes to the legislation, including a revision that specifically eliminates a plan that would have allowed ComEd to immediately begin collecting proposed rate increases before the Illinois Commerce Commission completed its review process.
In that plan, funds would have been rebated to customers if the ICC eventually rejected or reduced the rate proposals.
Tom O’Neill, senior vice president for regulatory and energy policy, said that under the version Quinn vetoed, the company still has to face state regulators before being allowed to collect more on customers’ bills.
“There are no automatic increases,” O’Neill said.
Tom Anderson, executive director of the Illinois Commerce Commission, says that’s a question of “semantics.”
ComEd, he says, would have to spend money to make grid upgrades under the proposed law. Then, much of the fate of the company’s request for increased rates would be decided by a formula. The formula would almost certainly result in an increased delivery charge for customers, he said.
“We don’t have the power to reject them unless they’re found to be imprudent,” Anderson said.