ComEd Grid Labs-Why the Power Sector Needs Advanced Labs

The severity and frequency of severe weather events has risen in recent years due to climate change, while cyber-attacks have also become more of a threat as technological advances threaten to outpace cyber security. Stakeholders have recognized the imperative nature of supplying sustainable, resilient power to every community. The power industry, and particularly advanced utilities have been working tirelessly to ensure the resiliency of the power grid, and to lead the transformation into grid of the future. Labs play a particularly important role in this transformation as will enable an accurate and expedited system modeling and analysis. The paper discusses ComEd's efforts, as the largest electric utility in the state of Illinois serving more than 4 million customers, to build and leverage advanced labs in designing the grid of the future.