Talk:Commonwealth Edison

Untitled
I never ever ever heard of anyone calling Commonweath Edison "Edison" fyi. Have you seriously heard this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.75.174.37 (talk • contribs)

Samuel Insull
The history section starts "Commonwealth Edison was founded by Samuel Insull, only one of several persons whose life and death comprised the composite characters incorporated in the renowned film, Citizen Kane. " The first reference (ref 2) only says re: Insull "The film also incorporates incidents from the lives of other early twentieth century tycoons,like utility magnate Samuel Insul,who had constructed an opera house for his wife in Chicago." The second reference (ref 3) is to an unreliable source, a religious blog called "Lifeway.com" which has a discredited anecdote about a meeting which really did not happen, which Insull supposedly attended. The third Insull reference (ref 4) is to an apparently factual history of the financial collapse of Insull's financial empire. The article Samuel Insull provides references which are less POV and say he was Thomas Edison's secretary and a founder of Edison General Electric, which became General Electric, before he came to Chicago to head Commonwealth Edison, which was a merger of Commonwealth Electric and Chicago Edison. He also founded Public Service, which developed rural electrification in the area of northern Illinois outside Chicago. The present text is POV, unbalanced, and unencyclopedic, so I will remove the part about "Citizen Kane." 24.12.184.179 05:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

How could you possibly miss the reference in the film, which obviously refers to Insull, as it chronicles the construction of the Civic Opera House which even YOU attribute to Insull, as a basis for removing the reference to the film, Citizen Kane?Marketex 05:19, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

And HOW could you miss THIS?: "The film's main character, Kane, is a composite of several historical individuals: newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst; the reclusive aerospace and movie mogul Howard Hughes; and the Chicago utilities magnate Samuel Insull. Citizen Kane is widely considered to be a masterpiece by critics and viewers alike, and is often cited as being one of the greatest and most innovative works in the history of film."[] Marketex 08:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Also please note that the "Traction Trusts" mentioned in a scene from Citizen Kane were interests held in trust by Samuel Insull. Marketex 09:51, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Also consider the following: []

Samuel Insull-A Brief Overview

Insull migrated to the United States from England as a young man in 1881, linking up with Thomas Edison and eventually co-founding the company that would become General Electric. In 1892 Insull moved to Chicago where he began to assemble his empire of utility and transportation companies.

His Chicago area holdings eventually included Commonwealth Edison, People's Gas, the Northern Indiana Public Service Company, and many more utilities. Insull led many innovations including mass production of electricity which made electricity cheap and widely available.

A natural outgrowth of electric utility companies was their ownership or acquisition of electric railroads such as interurbans and streetcar systems which were large electricity consumers. Insull acquired and rehabilitated during the 1910s and 1920s the major Chicago area interurbans (North Shore Line, South Shore Line, and the Chicago, Aurora, and Elgin) and the rapid transit lines which were merged into the Chicago Rapid Transit company.

Without Insull's immediate capital improvements it is unlikely that these interurbans would have survived the Great Depression. Insull's generous civic spirit and love for the Chicago area also seemed to motivate this desire to acquire and improve these electric lines as much as bottom line profit possibilities.

The Great Depression eventually brought down the utilities and transportation empire of Insull due to what became an overly leveraged financial position of his main holding company. Insull was tried and acquitted in each of three separate securities fraud trials in the mid-1930s. In retrospect Insull was probably set up as a scapegoat to partly blame for the financial woes of the country. Broken financially by the exhausting court trials and the Great Depression, he retired to France. Insull died on July 16, 1938, literally penniless, of a heart attack in a Paris subway station.

Marketex 05:30, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Or This: Commonwealth Edison Co.

Commonwealth Edison Substation, 1905 The Western Edison Light Co. was founded in Chicago in 1882, three years after Thomas Edison developed a practical light bulb. In 1887, Western Edison became the Chicago Edison Co. Samuel L. Insull became president of Chicago Edison in 1892; in 1897 Insull incorporated another electric utility, the Commonwealth Electric Light & Power Co. In 1907, Insull's two companies formally merged to create the Commonwealth Edison Co. As more people became connected to the electric grid, Insull's company, which had an exclusive franchise from the city, grew steadily. By 1920, when it used more than two million tons of coal annually, the company's 6,000 employees served about 500,000 customers; annual revenues had reached nearly $40 million. During the 1920s, its largest generating stations included one on Fisk Street and West 22nd and one on Crawford Avenue and the Sanitary Canal. Although Insull went bankrupt and fled the country during the Great Depression, Commonwealth Edison survived; after World War II, it received a new 42-year franchise from the city. During the second half of the twentieth century, the company became a world leader in nuclear power. In 1959, it opened the Dresden nuclear generating plant near Morris, Illinois, southwest of Chicago. Over the next three decades, the company known as “ComEd” opened several plants around the region and became the largest operator of nuclear power facilities in the United States. Although the company received several warnings from federal regulators about safety problems at these plants, most of them continued to operate, and by the 1990s nuclear power accounted for well over half of the company's output. Meanwhile, the company employed a workforce of more than 15,000 men and women in the Chicago area. With its rates subject to approval by state regulators, the company saw its annual revenues rise to roughly $7 billion by the late 1990s, when it had about 3.4 million customers in the northern Illinois region. In 1994, ComEd became part of a parent company named Unicom; in 1999, after merging with the Philadelphia-based PECO Energy Co., the new parent company took the name of Exelon. In 2002, Exelon's revenues exceeded $12 billion. It employed over 12,000 persons in the Chicago area and, through ComEd, supplied electricity to over 3.4 million customers.

This entry is part of the Encyclopedia's Dictionary of Leading Chicago Businesses) that was prepared by Mark R. Wilson, with additional contributions from Steven R. Porter and Janice L. Reiff. []

Marketex 06:14, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Considering all of the above, the original paragraph IS factually correct, but the article as it NOW exists is NOT. Samuel Insull was one of the several (3) persons whose life and death comprised the central character in Citizen Kane, Insull was in fact the founder of Commonwealth Edison, which did not exist prior to his merging of two companies that he either founded or over which he presided and whether you give credence to the account of Insull's life on a religious blog or not, the fact is that Insull died in poverty and disgrace, though I made no mention of the latter in the open text. Marketex 09:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Going on at great length about a claim that a movie was partially based on one or 2 incidents, such as building an opera house, in the life of the founder of the company is not the sort of encyclopedic detail that goes into a short article about a large company with a long history. Commonwealth Edison was not in the movie Citizen Kane. Take your notions about Samuel Insull to an article about him. How many presidents has the company had since the early 1930s? Your personal billing issues are also not encyclopedic. Find reliably sourced encyclopedic info and improve the article by adding that to make a neutral point of view article worth of Wikipedia. The items tagged as needing sources ("citizen groups have determined," "a physicist found") will have to be removed if you cannot provide reliable sources. An article cannot be made into an attack on a company you are mad at. I think the long complaint about your bill which you previously had in the article illustrates your hard feelings toward the subject of the article. The anecdote about the supposed meeting at the Edgewater Beach Hotel was invented by an official in Campus Crusade for Christ. It did not happen. But preachers have recited it for many years nonetheless. Also see WP:NPOV. Tiny Bill 22:33, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect passage moved here
I have moved the following passage here, becasue it is unsourced and demonstrably false: '''ComEd exclusively purchases its power from generation companies now owned by Exelon whose acquired facilities include those formerly owned by ComEd.{fact} When purchases of power exceed current demands of the grid directly serviced by ComEd,  ComEd sells such excess power to systems where diverse ownership of systems  assures a double windfall for the utility. The total price of power is projected to the bottom line of ComEd for the purposes of stating needs for rate-payer increases. Such needs for increases were shown by consumer groups to be based upon all power purchased with no allowance for sales to other systems and where projections do not allow for conservation measures adopted by consumers.{fact} Such measures include those adopted enmasse in anticipation of the rate increase including the utilization of long-life low consumption fluorescent lighting bulbs which energy consumption reduction rates exceed 75%.''' In fact, Commonwealth Edison buys a fair amount of its power from Midwest Generation which is a subsidiary of Edison International, not affiliated with Commonwealth Edison or its parent company Exelon. Midwest Energy purchased all of the coal, oil and natural gas fired power plants formerly owned by Commonwealth Edison, and Exelon, ComEds parent company, kept the nuclear plants. Thus all the unsourced stuff about the "double windfall" is wrong. Tiny Bill 23:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Funny, but "tiny bill" reminds me of an advertising mascot used by Commonwealth Edison as of the fifties --- LITTLE BILL, an animated light bulb fashioned as a bird with a bill located near the threads of same. Hello tiny bill, and as you have never heard of the reverse auction, currently a subject of a bill in the Illinois Legislature that would chastise Comed for engaging in an exchange with companies that indeed are owned by subsidiaries of either Exelon or are former properties of Commonwealth Edison. I am sorry that it took so long to get back to you, but at the request of the office of Lieutenant Governor of the State of Illinois, also the founder of CUB or the Citizens Utilities Board, I have been working on a research proposal to show how Commonwealth Edison has been skirting the absence of any rate increase since the freeze of same almost a decade ago. The Citizens Utility Board and the Illinois Commerce Commission and the aforementioned executive office are SOME of my sources and I regret that not all such sources of information render well in such a document, so though your editing is both welcome and expected, You too have not sourced your information. Marketex 20:08, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The username an editor chooses is pretty much meaningless. If it helps you avoid personal attacks I could switch to something like Red E. Kilowatt or perhaps Will E. Wiredhand or whatever name you do not find objectionable. My objections to POV and unsourced edits would remain the same. You incorrectly claimed that Commonwealth Edison bought all their power from companies owned by Exelon. The disagreement was not wether there was to be a reverse auction. The info about Midwest generation is in fact sourced in the previous paragraph to []. Edison International, as the reference says, bought the fossil fueled plants from ComEd. They are in fact a separate company dating back a hundred years or so. Please do not make false claims that different companies are the same company because the names sound similar. A lightning bug is not a lightning bolt, and Edison International is not Commonwealth Edison or Exelon. The Citizens Utility Board itself is an advocacy group and public action group and could not be considered a reliable source for anything but information about the organization itself. A state commerce commision would be a more respected source, but is run by political appointees and their statements are as subject to evaluation as those of any other organ of state government. It would sure be great to go on buying power at prices of the mid 1990's as ComEd customers did during the years of the rate freeze. I wonder if the Illinois legislature has considered roilling gas prices, clothing prices, and food prices back to those of the 1990's not to mention college tuition and medical expenses. It would be great. Wonder what the downside would be? All citations should comply with WP:ATT which is the standard governing referencing. Regards. Tiny Bill 22:08, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:ComEd.gif
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BetacommandBot 04:45, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Coatrack problems
The way this is written now, it seems to fit the criteria for a coat rack tag, since there is not much basic content about the subject company, mostly just allegations against its current management. I'm planning to come back with some reasonable content (like company history, operations, etc.), and hope to work some of the existing material into a more acceptably-NPOV form, but meantime it needs some help. --Morrand (talk) 02:54, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, I added a little more historical information to the top of the article. That part still needs to be fleshed out: there is a huge gap from about 1933 to about 2000, and even the parts that are there could stand some more detail. Still, it's more than was there before. Platt's The Electric City might be good for filling in the early history; there are probably others out there that would be good for filling in that gap (which is important: that is the period when ComEd became a major nuclear generator, which I believe played heavily in its business practices through that time.)

In this edit I've mostly tried to fill out the sections about the 2006-2007 rate case controversy in order to add some context and some references. That being what it is, I'm not inclined to pull off the NPOV tags yet without some more review and discussion.

I did pull out this section heading and paragraph. The paragraph is unsourced and (given that it's alleging fraud and deception) potentially libellous if it's not true, and has been tagged for citation for over a year and a half; I'm putting it here in case it can ultimately be sourced somewhere reliable. (I was unable to find any information about this investigation on the Illinois Commerce Commission Web site, but it is possible they were not involved.)


 *  ==Deceptive Billing Practices== 


 * ComEd is currently investigating reports that its own recurring practices tend to frustrate posting of payments of customer bills by their due dates, though paid in a timely manner. Though once thought to be an isolated problem, certain consumer advocacy groups have alleged that the practice of delayed posting, resulting in late fees and penalties is a widespread practice by this utility, where other utilities that actually require accounting of their receivables in a timely manner never engage in this practice without purpose of deception. Similar accounting frauds have marred the reputation of the industry.

More to come, I hope. Morrand (talk) 17:22, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

External links modified
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Request Edit
I have a COI as a paid advisor to Exelon. I would like to request:

1) that in the Infobox, the stock exchange info be updated to include the new stock symbol of the parent company, Excelon. It is "NASDAQ: EXC" with the hyperlink:

New infograph line would be: | parent = Exelon Corporation NASDAQ: EXC

2) In paragraph two, the stock symbol should also be changed: "For more than 100 years, Commonwealth Edison has been the primary electric delivery services company for Northern Illinois. Today, ComEd is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation (NASDAQ: EXC)...

deleting: "(NYSE: EXC)"

The switch from NYSE to NASDAQ happened today, September 25, 2019 at 9:30 a.m.

Thank you. 16:11, 25 September 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by BC1278 (talk • contribs) 16:22, 25 September 2019 (UTC)


 * The Wikilink to Exelon provides the correct ticker symbol and market in Exelon's article. Spintendo  04:17, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

"Federated Electric" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Federated Electric. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. signed,Rosguill talk 22:35, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Gap in Company History
There is nothing in the article about anything between 1935 and 1994. Those were the years when the company became the largest nuclear operator in the U.S. The nuclear construction program was the subject of tremendous controversy and litigation throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. Nothing at all in here about any of that.Lafong (talk) 01:54, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

New CEO
ComEd appointed a new CEO, updated infobox: https://www.comed.com/News/Pages/NewsReleases/2021-10-14.aspx LJ (talk) 06:17, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Report outages 534 E. Wildwood Villa Park IL 60181
Report outages 534 E. Wildwood Villa Park IL 60181 2600:1008:B169:18D4:9512:E31C:F3B6:53E1 (talk) 20:01, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Corruption scandal page?
Given how the ComEd corruption scandal has generated lots of media attention and has resulted in four high-profile convictions - of a its former CEO, former lobbyist, and a top aid to the Illinois House Speaker - does the scandal's significance warrant it's own page? Wburn (talk) 02:36, 9 August 2023 (UTC)