Palatine Residents Voice Complaints For ComEd

ComEd officials talked about planned improvements for the Palatine area meant to deal with power outages. They talked about severe weather this summer which caused a record number of outages. And they talked about the need for a smart grid.

But, at the end of discussion before the Monday night, some residents remained unconvinced and frustrated with power outages in parts of Palatine.

"I'm hearing no real answers and I'm listening to a lot of double-talk," said Debbie Tronina, who lives in Hidden Cove condominiums. "I'm not hearing answers that are going to take care of the immidiate problems."

Tronina said the condominiums had experienced several outages and that it was difficult to get through when she called. She said in the last outage the rest of Palatine had power restored and Hidden Cove still was out.

Tronina said that District 6 Council member Aaron Del Mar and Mayor Jim Schwantz had to get involved to get the problem rectified.

"This is a reoccurring problem," Tronina said, noting the condominiums have several special needs residents including her husband. "We have to live here and we can't continue to live on this type of basis."

Several residents including Tronina said outages happened far too frequently and occured even when there was not severe weather.

Earlier in the meeting ComEd External Affairs Manager Jim Dubeck said 2011 had a "summer like no other."

Dubeck said that through August ComEd had 2.4 million customers who experienced outages. No other year came within a million of that number, with the next highest outages being 1.4 million in 2007.

In Palatine ComEd serves about 25,910 households.

A June 21 storm knocked out power to 419,000 ComEd customers throughout Chicago, including 2,967 in Palatine. On , with 907,000 customers losing power. In Palatine, 9,928 households lost power.

Then, from to 324,000, including 5,219 in Palatine.

However, many of the residents who spoke at the meeting said there power problems had little to do with inclement weather.

Roxanne Abbamonte spoke on behalf of the board of the Heritage of Palatine Condominium Association. She said power surges was causing the fire pump to run and false alarms to occur.

"There's a safety issue involved now because the residents are not vacating their units because they think its false — and it has been," Abbamonte said. "Hopefully the day will never come when its a real one."

ComEd officials said they would look into the issue.

Palatine resident Carol Halenar spoke on behalf of about 90 homes in Brentwood Estates. She said in the last year there had been at least eight power failures which she said only one of which corresponded with the storms ComEd referenced.

"I would like the village to know this because I did point it out to someone from ComEd, just so that you have it down on the record as an area that needs to be looked at," Halenar said.

Dubeck said that one issue for ComEd is that it does not know that power is out unless a resident calls. He said a smart grid would improve ComEd's ability to know when an outage happens and how many homes are affected.

Dubeck said that analog meters register how much electricity is being used, but do not provide ComEd with other information. He said a modern grid with a smart meter would be able to send ComEd information.

Drew Zmollek, ComEd reliability manager said ComEd does a four-year tree trim cycle. However, he said the utility also was dependent on homeowners to trim or remove dead trees that are outside of the easement area.

Zmollek also went through problem areas in the village that were highlighted in red on a map. In many area he talked about targeted tree trimming or replacing underground cable in areas that had been causing problems.

"All the work here that I'm talking about should be done by May of next year," Zmollek said.

Zmollek also talked about "distribution automation." He said ComEd has been putting in smart switches mid-circuit, that way if there is a fault in the front half of the circuit the switch kicks in and protects the other half of the circuit.

"We already have about 42 percent of Palatine customers are already protected in one way, shape or form," Zmollek said. "We have some full loops, some half loops. That way we are working on already....It doesn't prevent the outage, but it helps minimize the extent of the outage."