By Ted Caddell

Homeland Security Funding ComEd Project

Commonwealth Edison is teaming with an engineering company to boost the reliability of Chicago’s electric grid and protect it against terrorism by installing three miles of superconductor cable beneath the city’s Loop district.

Funded in part by a $60 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security, the project is expected to be the first commercial-scale deployment of American Superconductor’s Resilient Electric Grid system (REG).

American Superconductor spokesperson Kerry Farrell said that the project, now in the design stage, will supplement part of ComEd’s underground distribution system.

“Superconductors are an alternative to copper wire – smarter, stronger, smaller. [ComEd] will use the cable to connect existing substations together, increasing the capacity of the grid without rebuilding” or adding more substations or transformers, she said.

The new superconducting cable looks more like ribbon than traditional thick, twisted, sheathed cable and is able to carry 10 times as much power.

“This is the first major deployment of superconducting cable of this size, probably the largest project like it in the world,” Terence R. Donnelly, ComEd executive vice president and chief operating officer, said in an interview. Previous demonstration projects have been deployed in South Korea and with Long Island Power Authority.

In Case of Emergencies                                                                                        

Substations typically serve specific areas and are isolated from one another to prevent a domino-like failure scenario. But that isolation means that one substation is unable to shoulder more of the load in the event another substation is taken out by a storm, technical failure or terroristic attack.

The REG will allow instant transfer of load in such an event, leading to a more robust and reliable system, Farrell said.

Donnelly said the project is part of an effort to update ComEd’s transmission and distribution system.

“We’ve read about threats to electric power grids, such as the attack on the grid in California, and we were looking for ways to use technology to protect against things like superstorms and the possibility of terrorist attacks,” he said. “We wanted to use technology to develop a smarter, more reliable and more secure grid. And we think [the superconducting cable] would provide a solution to back up substations, not in just a catastrophic event, but also in routine operations.”

ComEd selected the Chicago Loop, the city’s central business district, because of its importance “as a key area of trade, finance and government.”

ComEd and American Superconductor declined to put a price tag on the project.

But in a June filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, American Superconductor reported that the first phase — the evaluation and development of the installation plan — would take six to nine months and cost $1.5 million. The remaining phases of the project would cost the remainder of the $60 million — the total amount of revenue American Superconductor expects from the ComEd project.

After the design stage, Donnelly said it will take two to four years to complete the installation. He said an evaluation will be done to see if the REG should be expanded in the ComEd system, or in the other Exelon-owned systems, Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. and PECO.