Commonwealth Edison Company
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| Subsidiary | |
| Founded | 1907 |
| Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Parent | Exelon Corporation |
| Website | www.exeloncorp.com |
Commonwealth Edison, commonly known as ComEd, is the largest electric utility in Illinois, serving the Chicago and Northern Illinois area. The service territory roughly borders in Iroquois County to the south, the Wisconsin border to the north, the Iowa border to the west, and the Indiana border to the east.
For more than 100 years, Commonwealth Edison has been the primary electric delivery services company for Northern Illinois. Today, ComEd is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC), one of the nation's largest electric and gas utility holding companies. ComEd provides electric service to more than 3.8 million customers across Northern Illinois.
Commonwealth Edison's transmission lines operate at voltages of 69,000, 138,000, 345,000, and 765,000 volts, delivering power to their 3.8 million customer base. ComEd's subtransmission voltage is 34,500 volts. Their distribution line voltages are 4,160 volts, 7,200/12,470 volts and 7,970/13,800 volts. The company's revenues total more than $15 billion annually.
ComEd has interconnections with American Electric Power on its 765 kV system and with Wisconsin Electric to the north on its 345 kV and 138 kV systems and with Ameren to the south on its 345 kV system.
The earliest predecessor of Commonwealth Edison was the Isolated Lighting Company, established in early 1881 by George H. Bliss as a subsidiary of Thomas Edison's company to sell small Edison-patented generators and lighting systems, each serving one building or several nearby buildings. In 1882, this company was taken over by the Western Edison Light Company, which was chartered by several prominent Chicagoans to not only take over Isolated Lighting's role as Edison's agent in Chicago, but also to develop a central station electric system. Western Edison installed the first incandescent lighting in a Chicago home, that of stockholder John W. Doane, in 1882, and it was first lit on November 10 of that year.
In March, 1887, John M. Clark (president of Western Edison), Robert Todd Lincoln, and John B. Drake obtained a franchise from Chicago to distribute electricity in the downtown area, bounded by North Avenue, 39th Street, and Ashland Avenue. They then formed the Chicago Edison Company, which took over all of Western Edison's business on July 2, 1887. Chicago Edison's first central generating station, designed by chief engineer Frederick Sargent, opened at 139 (later 120) West Adams Street in August, 1888. This first station was intended to serve an area bounded by Harrison Street, Market Street and Water Street (both now Wacker Drive), and Michigan Avenue, and served this area with an Edison-patented direct current system until it closed in 1914 or 1915.
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