Press release
ComEd Restores Power to More Than 625,000 Customers Following Damaging Derecho and Multiple Tornados
More than 1,400 additional crew members arriving in region to join restoration effort CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- ComEd has restored power to more than
About this update from Exelon Corporation
[{"type":"text","content":"\nMore than 1,400 additional crew members arriving in region to join restoration effort\n\n CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--\nComEd has restored power to more than 625,000 families and businesses, or nearly 80 percent of the customers affected by the derecho that slammed northern Illinois on Monday afternoon causing significant damage across the entire region. The storm brought hurricane force winds with gusts higher than 90 miles per hour, extensive lighting, golf ball-sized hail and seven confirmed tornados. About 171,000 customers remain without power.\n\n\nMore than 1,900 ComEd employees and contractors have been working around the clock since Monday afternoon to restore power to customers quickly and safely. More than 1,400 additional mutual assistance workers began arriving from across the country today to join the restoration effort.\n\n\nIn spite of the extensive damage caused by the tornados and derecho, ComEd restored power to 540,000 customers within a day, the fastest restoration of 500,000 customers in the company’s history. This is due in large part to the smart grid investments ComEd has made since 2012, including in technologies that automatically detect outages and reroute power around problem areas, avoiding significant outages that otherwise would have occurred.\n\n\n“As we saw from fallen trees that crushed cars and homes, the derecho with multiple tornados was a rare and destructive storm,” said Joe Dominguez, CEO of ComEd. “We’re grateful to municipal leaders and other first responders for their partnership as we work with them to clear roads and debris so that we can safely restore power to affected areas. Especially in a pandemic, our customers are dependent on reliable power at home, and we appreciate the 6,000 women and men of ComEd and the crews that traveled hundreds of miles here to help get the power flowing for families and businesses as fast as possible.”\n\n\nRestoration efforts are ahead of schedule, and ComEd now expects to restore power to over 95 percent of customers by Friday night, with nearly 80 percent of customers already restored. Hundreds of additional customers are being restored each hour, but outages in areas where tornados or other intense storm events occurred could take longer to restore.\n\n\nIn the city of Chicago, which had some of the highest concentrations of customer outages, Com...