Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) has placed a turnkey order worth $44 million with ABB for a new substation in downtown Chicago. Under the terms of the agreement ABB’s scope of supply includes conceptual design, civil engineering, equipment supply, installation and commissioning of the De Koven substation, with completion and startup scheduled for May 2002. The project is part of a five year plan to modify Chicago’s power grid in order to ensure reliability of supply and competitive service delivery. The project was stimulated by power outages during the summer of 1999 after which ABB engineers used grid modelling and simulation to help ComEd design a network capable of re-routing power around any disturbances that might occur in the grid. The scheme devised involves one new substation and expansion of four others.
