ComEd reports progress on outage prevention in Hoffman Estates
ComEd and Hoffman Estates officials have reported significant progress on the prevention of outages in three hard-hit southeastern neighborhoods, only a third of the way through the 90-day window the village gave the utility to make improvements or face litigation before the Illinois Commerce Commission.
Numerous residents complained in August of a lack of reliability that in some cases went back to the 1970s and 80s. Three men spoke of the health risk they face if their CPAP machines lose power when they sleep, while a woman who works remotely said she regularly must explain the outages to her boss.
Outages from severe weather in June and July renewed those frustrations and led to last month's presentation by ComEd representatives and the ultimatum from the village board.
ComEd External Affairs Manager Joseph Turnage provided the first of three monthly updates this week.
"We dug into it in a little more detail, and we accomplished a few things since the last time that I was here," he told the village board. "We took the time to review those three areas on the east side. And each one of those reviews included historical outage studies in addition to multiple field reviews and reliability drivers in those target areas. And we also implemented an immediate and long-action remediation in those three areas."
Though Turnage did not share the projected costs, he said that all the work he cited has been budgeted internally.
Continued work in the first area, comprised of part of The Highlands community, would include replacement of underground cable and enhanced tree trimming.
The second area, involving another section of The Highlands, would require additional fusing to reduce the impact of outages and installation of underground ties to build additional restoration routes.
The third area, generally known as Parcel C, will require replacement of the mainline overhead wire with underground cable, installation of tree-resistant wire, enhanced tree trimming and the same fixes also proposed for the second area.
Much of the work is expected to be completed this fall, but some in area one likely will take until January while the most intensive parts of the area two and three enhancements won't be completed until June.
"Of course, that's a much larger project than the other ones I mentioned today," Turnage said of the latter.
He reported some positive signs about the work already done in recent weeks. A storm on Aug. 29 that caused outages for 54,000 customers across the ComEd system caused only one Hoffman Estates home to lose power, and it was not in the areas currently targeted as problematic.
Village Trustee Gary Pilafas said a number of residents regularly update him about ComEd's progress in their area. They counted three storms in the past month and reported that they hadn't lost power during any of them.