ComEd to hike electricity delivery rates by $245 million

Commonwealth Edison, the Illinois utility has received consent for raising delivery rates by 11 percent as part of a $2.6 billion grid modernization program.

For next year, a $245 million rate hike was granted to the ComEd, approved by Illinois Commerce Commission.

The new rates will come into effect from January, accumulating nearly $2.50 to the average monthly household electric bill, which currently is about $86.

With the new increase, average monthly household electric bills will near $90. The average bill was around $82 in 2011.

In 2014, the utility approved a $340 million hike, which supplemented $5 to the average monthly bill.

ComEd this year added about $5.50 per month to the average customer bill to pay for grid modernization and the increase approved will add $2 to $3 on top of the earlier increase to the average monthly bill.
According to the 2011 state law, the infrastructure upgrades acquired some authority to govern the commission.

However, regarding ComEd’s annual rate-hike requests, some relaxation has been allowed to the commission.

The commission curtailed ComEd’s certain demands like reimbursements for the utility’s annual worker incentive pay.

ComEd is upgrading the local power grid against outages due to storms and enable faster restoration during blackouts.

In addition, ComEd has framed a new smart-meter installation program for its 3.8 million customers.

Those meters will help ComEd to remotely monitor the power usage, providing potential ability to reduce cost.

In Chicago, the electricity costs are rising due to smart grid law’s annual rate hikes and market interventions by the regional grid operator, PJM Interconnection.

The operator supervises the setting of prices paid to power plants to ensure the delivery during future weather-induced demand spikes.

ComEd has so far installed around 660,000 smart meters and expects to install all the meters by 2018.

To date, the other grid improvements have directly benefited customers with 30 percent improvement in storm restoration times and more than 1 million avoided customer power outages, according to ComEd.

In another development, State utility regulators have approved a $137 million rate increase for power-grid upgrades on the Ameren Illinois system.

The 17.4 percent increase in rates, announced by the Illinois Commerce Commission will come into effect from Jan. 1.

Citizens Utility Board (CUB) is planning to challenge these recent hikes, as stated by the authorities.

Sabeena Wahid
[email protected]