Illinois groups dispute who should pay connection costs
Records filed by ComEd in a regulatory proceeding estimate that infrastructure and system upgrades for connecting 30 data centres will cost $3.1 billion, Block Club Chicago reported. Some projects are already connected, while the remainder are expected to enter service by 2031. Developers have provided $721 million in advance deposits.
The Citizens Utility Board and Environmental Law & Policy Center argue that the deposits could leave a potential $2 billion shortfall to be spread across bills for households and small businesses. ComEd disputes that analysis, saying it overlooks $1.1 billion backed by lines of credit that guarantee transmission-rate payments from data centres for 10 years.
ComEd said deposits may rise as projects become better defined and that any remaining distribution costs would be allocated among comparable customers in the large-user rate class, rather than across all customers. The utility has also proposed assigning rates directly to individual data centres according to their costs. Consumer advocates maintain that the safeguards could still leave a substantial gap and want data centres to cover their infrastructure requirements in full.
ComEd’s transmission security agreements apply to projects covered by a requirement approved in 2025. Nineteen of the 30 projects pre-date that requirement, according to Block Club Chicago. ComEd said the agreements have led to substantial attrition among data-centre requests, some of which can be speculative or duplicated across utilities.
Firm hyperscaler orders lift US storage forecast
In a separate national indicator, BloombergNEF increased its forecast for US energy-storage deployment by 30%, Utility Dive reported. BloombergNEF said hyperscaler interest in onsite and nearby storage had translated into firm orders. The available forecast details do not establish a connection between that revision and ComEd’s estimated infrastructure costs in northern Illinois.