Windy city, smart city: Chicago’s resilient microgrid

Transforming South Side Chicago’s power and places

The nickname 'windy city' comes not from Chicago's exposed location, apparently, but from a perceived propensity to talk hot air. Not so with Illinois’ largest electric utility, Commonwealth Edison (ComEd), whose vision of a Community of the Future (CoF) we helped deliver, including a microgrid to power energy-efficient smart city initiatives in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. By linking the microgrid with the Illinois Institute of Technology‘s (IIT) microgrid, ComEd created the first ever microgrid cluster in the United States.

We were selected to develop the metrics for microgrid performance to measure impact in electric, community, and resilience capacities. We also implemented pilots and proofs of concepts for innovative smart city initiatives to maximize benefits of the microgrid and make the community more smart, connected, and resilient. Our work helped ensure energy savings could be maximized, critical system upgrades prioritized, and smart city services enhanced to address inclusion and equity in areas of high need.

Microgrid, major change

Microgrids enable local areas to generate, store, and share electricity flexibly and independently of the main grid. It is this technology that is critical to the cost-effective, energy-efficient resilience at the heart of Community of the Future (COF) - ComEd’s ambitious smart cities strategy.

The project was rich in both opportunities and challenges. Close collaboration between ComEd, the City of Chicago, a neighboring college campus microgrid, neighborhood public schools, and key stakeholders within the local community was key to delivering outcomes that were not only positive, but resulted in community benefits beyond energy resilience and efficiency savings, such as STEM education and improved mobility.

Energizing cities, engaging communities

Developing the microgrid performance metrics was a critical step in the program for our multidisciplinary team, enabling us to measure the impact of the microgrid, including both technical measures of power performance as well as community benefits such as economic improvement and emissions reductions.

This, in turn, helped us to establish the measurement approach on the viability of the smart city pilots, and to assess pilot technologies, which included electric vehicle (EV) sharing programs, interactive way-finding kiosks, solar-powered night security lighting, and internet-connected air quality sensors.

We worked with ComEd to analyze the potential impact of smart city technologies on the objectives of the CoF program, and to assure technical compatibility with existing and planned utility infrastructure, such as fiber optic and mesh communications networks. This work also required careful planning of each smart feature’s siting and positioning, to ensure optimum performance and community impact where it was needed most.

In parallel, our team developed a framework to help ComEd align program assessments with the regulatory and financial landscape, and to communicate the value of its resilience investments to government officials and regulating bodies, to support future funding and approval.

For Bronzeville’s 43,000 residents, a highly inclusive approach to community stakeholder engagement was essential to integrating the program with the unique character of the neighborhood’s rich artistic and cultural legacy, while addressing current community needs.

Through community workshops, we focused on both general awareness and engagement around the project, but also on articulating specific smart technology applications and how they would deliver tangible benefits to the community.

By delivering proofs of concept and pilots, we helped ComEd bring the benefit of these emerging technologies to Bronzeville.

Bronzeville – a smart city blueprint

In Bronzeville, we helped ComEd to successfully demonstrate the role an electric utility and its microgrids can play in deploying smart city initiatives at the community level.

With working pilots now in place, the neighborhood and its residents and institutions are powering forward to a more energy-efficient, more resilient, more livable future – in short, a better place to be.