Story thread · 3 reports / 2 sources

The cost of maintaining the electric grid: The Rundown

wbez.org · 12dShare

Good afternoon! It’s Wednesday, and my TBR is laughing at how many great new books are releasing this month. (The roundup in the link doesn’t even include everything I’m interested in.) Here’s what you need to know today. 1. ComEd customers pay billions to keep the lights on during storms. Will it be enough? ComEd customers have footed the bill for billions of dollars spent by the utility in recent years to help ensure that power stays on in Northern Illinois even during the worst weather. Yet the lights still went out in 2.4 million homes during storms this year, my colleague Brett Chase writes. Keeping the power on during increasingly extreme weather costs a lot. As a result, ComEd says it needs to raise more than $15 billion through rate increases so it can handle rising demand and deal with intense storms that experts say are getting worse because of climate change. That’s on top of $4.4 billion being spent on a previously approved initiative to strengthen the electric grid — the s

First report: ComEd customers pay billions to keep the lights on during storms. Will it be enough? — suntimes.com, 12d