How Often Is Power Out In La Grange?

LA GRANGE, IL — The good news is that La Grange's power is on virtually all the time. But people remember when it's not because it upends their lives.

In both 2018 and 2019, ComEd's reliability rate in La Grange was 99.98 percent, according to its reports submitted to the village government. In 2017, the rate was even higher — 99.99 percent.

Patch obtained ComEd's reports to the village government after officials complained during a meeting about the utility's response to outages after a storm in August.

In 2019, the average number of interruptions per La Grange customer was .79, a number that has declined for the last four years, according to the reports. It stood at 1.81 in 2016, but was at a 10-year low in 2014 when it fell to .39.

The average length of an interruption in service was about 2½ hours in 2019. Just two years before, it was a little over an hour. From 2007 to 2011, the average outage was four hours.

In 2019, a third of the 75 outages in La Grange were blamed on tree issues. Nine were attributed to overhead equipment, six to animals and five to weather, among other factors, the reports show.

At a meeting in August, La Grange officials criticized ComEd's handling of its communications after a storm caused outages in the village and throughout the Chicago area. One official labeled ComEd's performance unacceptable and labeled the utility "keystone cops."

In Darien, a ComEd representative showed up at a City Council meeting to answer aldermen's concerns about the response to the August outages.

Here are statistics from ComEd's reports about the village of La Grange: