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NETWORK / 40 / OCTOBER 2016 Chicago is known as the Windy City for good reason. It is subject to a variety of harsh weather conditions that leave its electricity grid vulnerable, and outages surprisingly common. 2011 was a particularly bad year. A blizzard in February took hundreds of thousands of customers offline, while two thunderstorms in June and July cut off roughly two million. Commonwealth Edison (ComEd), the electricity distributor for Chicago, has a plan to improve the resilience of the grid, while also integrating energy efficiency measures and lowering energy prices for consumers. It is planning to build a $50 million 10MW microgrid in the Bronzeville neighbourhood of Chicago. The microgrid, enabled by smart meters already installed in homes and powered by distributed generation and home batteries, will be able to "island" itself from the main grid during power outages to keep the lights on. It will also be able to cluster U S E C A S E B R O N Z E V I L L E , C H I C A G O u Commonwealth Edison is a 110-year old utility that powers Chicago and much of northern Illinois u Bronzeville is a two- square-mile area of Chicago with a population of 40,000. It has advanced metering infrastructure and smart switches, and is close to the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) u The Chicago grid is vulnerable to extreme weather, especially wind leading to sizeable power outages u ComEd will build the first utility-owned microgrid in the United States in Bronzeville u Utilities are not allowed to own and operate generation assets in the US u ComEd has proposed a bill that would provide $250 million in funding for five microgrids, including the Bronzeville project u The 10MW microgrid will be able to island and cluster with a nearby microgrid owned by IIT u The two grids will interact via a master controller, and will be tied to a 4kV underground cable u ComEd has received two grants from the US Department for Energy to fund the project – $1.2 million for the master controller, and $4 million for solar PV and batteries u The microgrid will contain solar panels, gas turbines, fuel cells, battery storage, and combined heat and power with the already established 9MW system completed in 2013 and owned by the Illinois Institute of Technology. Power will be balanced across the two systems via a master controller that is being funded by the US Department of Energy. But what makes this microgrid unique is that it will be the first utility-owned microgrid in the US. ComEd hopes its plan for the first "community of the future" in Bronzeville will serve as a blueprint for utility-owned microgrids moving forwards, and signals the direction of travel for electricity distributors as they try to adapt to changing technologies and the emergence of two-way power flows through their systems. Several hurdles stand in the way of ComEd realising its vision, the most significant of which being the fact that, as is the case in the UK, electricity distributors in the US are banned from owning generation. They cannot put the cost of building or installing assets that could be considered generation into its base rate. Key legislative reforms are needed to the 30-year-old Customer Choice and Rate Relief Act which would allow ComEd to include energy efficiency projects in its rates and recoup costs from customers. ComEd has faced resistance to its calls for change, legislation it proposed was not been introduced as fears exist around microgrids being run as a monopoly rather than a competitive process. Developers in the state are also concerned that changing the law will push them out of the market for distributed resources and the associated storage, although this could be overcome by forcing ComEd to conduct a competitive bidding process. For the project to go ahead in its current form, ComEd need the Illinois legislature to pass its Next Generation Energy Plan, which was proposed earlier this year after its Future Energy Plan bill was shot down. The new bill would provide $250 million for five microgrids, including the one in Bronzeville, down from $300 million for six microgrids in the previous bill. ComEd has said the future of the project does not depend on the outcome of the bill, but the funding will speed up the process.