ComEd Maps Outages, Pilots Online Customer Reporting

According to a press release Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) (a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation one of the nation’s largest electric utilities serving Northern Illinois) has for the first time put an outage map on its website. When I visited some two dozen blue symbols dotted the Virtual Earth map of Illinois. Each represented 0-50 customers without power. The data is updated every 30 minutes.

The announcement was within a press release seeking 10,000 customers to sign up for a free outage alert program which will pilot use of text and other methods to let customers know of outages. Once tested the program will be rolled out across the user base. “By enrolling as an online user, customers can also use the Web site to report power outages, manage their ComEd accounts, and view and pay their bills.”