Grid Reliability & the Next Wave of Load Growth - ComEd President & CEO Gil Quiniones

So now let's talk about ComEd.

It's Commonwealth Edison, not to be confused with Consolidated Edison, right? Um, and you said nine million customers, but what I like to do is also go sort of biography of the institution.

So let's go further back to what that was like at the start.

Um, if you can recall, like, pretty much the very first energizations that it did.

When did this start? Uh, I happen to know that it plays a really crucial role in, like, the history of all of the electricity sector in the US, but I'd love to hear it from you too.

Excellent.

Well, storied, uh- ... franchise, I would call it.

Uh, you know, Sam Insull was, let's just say the right-hand person of Thomas Edison, was asked when, when, when, uh, To- Thomas Edison's company was sold to GE, Sam Insull was asked by, at the time, Chicago Edison, and say, "Hey, who should we hire as the new CEO of Chicag- of Chicago Edison?" And he actually raised his hand, "I wanna be the, the CEO." So he was hired.

He went from New York to the Midwest to be the head of Chicago Edison, and then merged Commonwealth Electric and Chicago Edison in 1907.

That then became Commonwealth Edison.

So we were incorporated in 1907, 119 years ago.

Um, Sam Insull also, he was instrumental in the development of the investor-owned utility business model, where you regulate utilities within a certain franchise, uh, and form a regulatory body at the government level to, to, to regulate this, this, this monopoly.

That entire investor-owned business model was really, uh, started by Sam Insull.

So it's a, it's a, a lot of history here.

Uh, many of the electrical manufacturers that are i- in existence today were founded by Com- Commonwealth Edison engineers.

You know, SNC Electric, for example, uh, is a, is, uh, was founded by a, a, a ComEd engineer.

A GW Electric.

Uh, by the way, both are still here in our service territory and making electrical equipment, uh, for all of the utilities around the world.

Uh, SEL, you know, Schweitzer Electric, uh, that was also part of, of ComEd.

In fact, the SNC, the S in the SNC is a Schweitzer.

Mm-hmm.

So it's kinda like an offshoot that, as you know, they're involved in relays and protections and controls, et cetera.

So there's really a lot of, of history from Sam Insull to, to all the, the manufacturers that we have.

The technology that the utilities use, uh, come from Chicago.

I mean, I've always thought of Insull as essentially the, the, the m- the market creator.