City Water, Light and Power is receiving a $1.1 million federal grant to upgrade Springfield’s electric infrastructure.
The grant, provided by the US Department of Energy through the Illinois Finance Authority, will support a $1.6 million project to modernize critical substation and electric distribution assets, according to a community announcement. The project aims to improve service reliability and shorten outage restoration times for Springfield’s approximately 70,000 electric customers.
The city council approved the grant Oct. 7. Work is set to begin by the end of 2025 and be completed in 2028. CWLP’s electric engineering group and crews will manage and complete all work in-house.
The upgrades will integrate real-time monitoring equipment with automated fault location, isolation and service restoration features. This includes circuit breaker replacements at substations, reclosers on overhead equipment and switches in the underground distribution network. The upgrades are prioritized to impact the largest groups of customers first, delivering the biggest reduction in overall outages and restoration times, according to the announcement.
“Improving reliability to our network of real time monitoring and automated response features is a great investment for our city,” CWLP Chief Utility Engineer Doug Brown said in the announcement. “This is about restoring our customer’s power as safely and quickly as possible.”
This story was created by reporter Abreanna Blose, ablose@gannett.com, with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Journalists were involved in every step of the information gathering, review, editing and publishing process. Learn more at cm.usatoday.com/ethical-conduct.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Springfield gets $1.1M for electric grid upgrades