Ahead of this year's storm season, ComEd has enhanced its communications with Northern Illinois municipalities to increase collaboration, service coordination and information sharing.

"Enhancing our communications with municipalities is one element of ComEd's ongoing efforts to provide customers with quality service and information," said Fidel Marquez, ComEd vice president of External Affairs and Large Customer Services. "Before this year's storm season begins, we want local governments to know they can rely on robust communications with ComEd."

ComEd developed a computer application, called eOutage, specifically to keep municipalities better informed when outages occur. This online tool provides timely updates to municipal officials of the same data ComEd crews rely on when restoring service following a storm. Recently, eOutage was revised to provide municipal officials with enhanced information regarding outages affecting their constituents.

The company will use several new modes of telecommunications, including text messaging, to convey outage and restoration data, public safety information and other outage related data to police and fire departments; village managers and mayors; state officials; emergency service offices; disaster agency coordinators; and sheriffs' departments.

In addition to these enhancements, ComEd also implemented Virtual Hold last October, which is a new technology that gives customers the option of requesting a call back from our call center. ComEd will call them back in the same amount of time they would have been placed on hold.

Expanded communications like these are expected to improve emergency storm restorations. For instance, through closer communication, municipal resources can be deployed to clear a street in coordination with the dispatch of ComEd crews to where fallen trees have made access difficult. Local officials will also be in a better position to inform ComEd of outages affecting critical facilities.

ComEd was honored in January by the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) with their "Emergency Recovery Award" for outstanding efforts to restore power following last August's multi-front storm system, which resulted in the worst damage to ComEd's electrical system in a decade.

"Even though we received national recognition for our response to last August's series of storms, we are not going to rest on our laurels," Marquez said. "We are committed to continuous improvement in all operational areas, including how we communicate with local officials and other first responders. These enhancements will improve our coordination with local government, which will benefit customers."