IEEE Electrification Magazine - June 2018 - 10

technology leaders

Engage with
Community to
Understand
Their Priorities...

Leverage
Partnerships to
Identify Solutions
for Community
Priorities...

This Collaboration
Will Deliver a
Smart community
That Is...

Climate,
Energy,
Resilience

Mobility

Economic
Public Safety
Development
and Health
Training and Jobs

Elected/Municipal
Officials and Departments

Connected

Public Services Culture and Food and
and
Education Agriculture
Administration

Community Organizations

Academic Institutions

Civic Organizations

Technology Partners

Green

Resilient

Figure 3. The smart city strategic framework, a model for addressing community priorities.

Figure 4 presents some of Comed's
capabilities and ongoing projects in
line with smart city developments.
these projects can impact various
city infrastructure, including energy,
mobility, health and safety, education,
public services, water, and waste. Fol-
lowing are some of Comed's existing
and future projects that fall under the
smart city paradigm. the projects are
categorized under short-term and
long-term initiatives.

Short-Term Initiatives
Comed recognizes that the Communi-
ty of the Future will have a series of
components (Figure 5). the ongoing
initiatives at Comed that support the
smart city paradigm are displayed in
Figure 6. many of the initiatives are
geared toward the enhanced livability
and workability through resiliency and
reliability improvements. the projects
also target the sustainability aspect of
a smart city through renewable energy
deployments in microgrids and
nanogrids as well as improved effi-
ciency through smart grid analytics.
one of Comed's major smart city
initiatives is the smart streetlights

I EEE E l e c t r i f i c a t i on M a gaz ine / j un e 2018

project. this project fits well with the
smart city paradigm because it le-
verages iCt to support livability and
workability through increased safe-
ty and security and sustainability
through reduced energy consump-
tion. Comed has already begun in-
stalling smart light-emitting diode
(LeD) streetlights in its service terri-
tory as part of an effort to ultimate-
ly have 140,000 such devices in
northern illinois. the smart LeD
streetlight solution takes advantage
of the wireless mesh communica-
tions network built for the smart
meters. the communication net-
work is used to remotely control the
streetlights and gather data on their
operations. to help provide Chicago
residents with access to all the city
offers, no matter which street they
live on, Comed is partnering with in-
novacorp to provide an electric vehi-
cle (ev) as part of a Community
mobility project that would mitigate
first/last mile mobility challenges for
Chicago's bronzeville neighborhood.
microgrids and nanogrids repre-
sent another major initiative. a
microgrid is a small-scale power sys-

tem with the ability to self-supply and
separate itself from the main grid. mi-
crogrids are designed and deployed to
address the energy needs of local cus-
tomers. Comed was recently awarded
two grants from the U.s. Depart-
ment of energy to develop an advanced
microgrid controller, which efficiently
monitors and controls the loads and
the distributed energ y resources
(Ders) within the microgrid, and to
install solar and storage within a mi-
crogrid. Comed was authorized by the
iCC to install the first utility-operated
clustered microgrid in the bronzeville
neighborhood. microgrids are perfect
examples of smart city projects be-
cause they target the three smart city
key focus areas through reliability and
resiliency improvements and the inte-
gration of renewables. nanogrids are
smaller-scale microgrids that typically
serve a single building or load. Comed
is supporting a project to develop a
concept nanogrid on the campus of
the illinois institute of technology.
true energy independence and effi-
ciency of a building can be achieved
through nanogrids. also, they can po-
tentially have a parallel direct current

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Electrification Magazine - June 2018