ComEd expands Will County substation

ComEd has announced plans to expand its Wilton Center substation in Will County.

The Wilton Center substation will be expanded to accommodate wind and solar projects, ComEd said in a news release.

“Investments like the expansion of the Wilton Center substation will ensure the successful interconnection of new renewable energy generation to the grid so that it can be delivered through our transmission system to communities across Illinois,” ComEd CEO Gil Quinones said in the release.

The Wilton Center substation was built in 1968 and is about 1 million square feet in size, according to ComEd. It will be expanded by about 500,000 square feet.

Expansion will include the installation of new circuit breakers, transformers, relay switches, network data and control systems.

The expansion will enable the substation to support five wind farms and two solar farms with the capacity to produce a total of up to 2,450 megawatts of renewable energy, according to the release.

According to ComEd, the expanded substation will support a number of power projects, including:

• Heritage Prairie wind farm that crosses from Kankakee County into Livingston County

• Panther Grove Wind Energy wind farms in Livingston and Woodford counties

• Lower Crossing Wind Farm in Kankakee County

• Osagrove Flats Wind Farm in LaSalle County