THE 62% GHOST LOAD:
HOW COMED IS TRYING TO CONCEAL THE TRUTH
They claim this substation is for neighborhood growth. Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) documents prove it is to subsidize massive corporate developments hidden in plain sight.
Source: Commonwealth Edison Multi-Year Integrated Grid Plan, Appendix A, Page 3-4.
ComEd Shifting Mega-Development Electrical Needs Onto Our Transit Land
With City Council actively evaluating a massive $200+ million public Tax Increment Financing (TIF) infrastructure funding for Foundry Park (Lincoln Yards North), a glaring accountability problem has quietly been uncovered inside ComEd’s active ICC rate case filings.
“Lincoln Yards will utilize the added capacity at ~62% of the customer build out.”
— ComEd ICC Filing, “Lakeview New Substation” at 1111 W. DiverseyThe Data Center Precedent
Mega-developments must host and subsidize their own utility infrastructure. Much like data centers, private developers seeking hundreds of millions in public taxpayer dollars should not be permitted to push their heavy infrastructure payloads onto surrounding residential neighborhoods. If City Council is holding the keys to $200M+ in public funding, we must condition approval on holding ComEd and the developer strictly accountable and force them to relocate this substation to a nearby manufacturing zone!
Demand Accountability NowLet’s look at the math ComEd doesn’t want us to talk about.
ComEd’s official ICC legal justification for this substation explicitly stated that the now defunct Lincoln Yards development was going to consume 62% of the substation’s entire capacity at 1111 W. Diversey.
That 62% number was calculated for a massive corporate empire that collapsed.
The original plan called for 53 acres and 14.5 million square feet of high-rise skyscrapers. The newly approved project, Foundry Park, is half the area and completely strips away millions of square feet of high-demand office towers and replaces them with neighborhood housing and open parks.
Commercial offices use up to THREE TIMES more peak electricity than apartment buildings.
By wiping out the corporate tech towers, the actual maximum electrical demand for that land has been cut significantly. The original engineering need is dead.
When confronted, ComEd switches to a semantic shell game.
Now they claim that the new, smaller Foundry Park development isn’t even part of their forecast, and that this 138kV industrial footprint is solely for “projected neighborhood growth”?!
But their own testimony catches them in a massive contradiction.
ComEd admits they plan to connect the new Foundry Park development directly into the existing Clybourn Substation. They are using a shell game—using your ratepayer money to build a brand-new substation at 1111 W. Diversey, just for a private developer 1.5 miles away where industrial/manufacturing land is available!
The filings don’t lie. ComEd is trying to pull a fast one.
If ComEd engineered this system for a 14.5-million-square-foot corporate city that vanished, why are they building the exact same massive industrial asset in Transit-Oriented Development lot meant for housing and retail? A lot that is only 700 ft from an ADA-accessible L stop. They are forcing their customers to bankroll an over-sized corporate development that doesn’t exist!.