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ComEd Livens Expanded High Voltage Substation at Wilton Center, Built to Enable Largest Cluster of Wind and Solar Projects in Illinois

businesswire.com
EXC The expansion of ComEd's substation, a unit of Exelon, will enable significant new renewable energy generation, potentially lowering costs and meeting growing demand. This infrastructure upgrade is a positive development for the company.

CHICAGO--( BUSINESS WIRE)--ComEd today announced it has livened an expansion of its 765 kilovolt (765 kV) Wilton Center substation in southern Will County. The substation expansion is a necessary upgrade to enable the largest cluster of utility-scale onshore wind and solar projects to be interconnected to the ComEd grid and in the PJM energy market starting in 2026.

“The livening of the Wilton Center expansion project marks a major milestone,” said ComEd President and CEO Gil Quiniones. “The expansion will enable ComEd to deliver more than 2,000 megawatts of new renewable generation through our transmission system to meet growing demands for electricity among residential and business customers. What’s more, interconnecting large volumes of renewable energy in the PJM zone helps us put downward pressure on rising energy costs.”

The expansion increased the Wilton Center substation yard by 50% to 1.5 million square feet. The massive project was able to minimize environmental impact by reusing approximately 80,000 tons of topsoil from the site and using approximately 90,000 tons of on-site clay for the earthwork requirements, eliminating the need to export soil from or import it to the site and avoiding costly hauling of soil in and out of the project. New equipment includes 765kV circuit breakers, current and voltage transformers for instrumentation, disconnect switches, surge arresters, and extensive protection and control upgrades. A new detention pond was built to hold 2.8 million gallons of stormwater.

The Wilton Center substation, constructed in 1968 and located near Joliet, Ill., supports ComEd’s highest voltage transmission lines of 765 kV, which are advantageous for moving large amounts of power over long distances as they minimize the amount of power lost as electricity flows from one location to the next. It is estimated that less than 1% of all existing transmission lines in the United States are built for this highest voltage level.

After an additional minor upgrade to the Wilton Center substation planned for the second quarter of 2026, ComEd’s transmission system will have the capacity necessary for five wind farms and two solar farms to output a total of up to 2,450 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy for the ComEd transmission system and the PJM energy market, which includes all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia. The wind and solar farms to be supported by the expanded Wilton Center substation include:

ComEd crews and Lindblad Construction led the construction work on the Wilton Center expansion while Burns & McDonnell served as ComEd’s engineer for preliminary and final design and construction support.

ComEd is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation (NASDAQ:EXC), a Fortune 200 company and one of the nation’s largest utility companies, serving more than 10.7 million electricity and natural gas customers. ComEd powers the lives of more than 4.2 million customers across northern Illinois, or 70 percent of the state’s population. For more information, visit ComEd.com and connect with the company on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X and YouTube.