Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd), utility serving northern Illinois, including the Chicago metro, has launched a data center efficiency incentive program.

Utilities around the US incentivize its customers to increase energy efficiency of their facilities and equipment by giving them rebates, size of which is measured base on the amount of energy whatever efficiency work they had done saved.

They also use financial incentives to attract data center customers to their service territories. Data centers are highly desired customers for utilities because they consume a lot of power but maintain a stable load, which means they generate a lot of revenue for energy providers while being relatively easy to serve.

ComEd will provide both “per-kWh” financial incentives and technical assistance under its new data center efficiency program.

Val Jensen, SVP of customer operations at ComEd, said ComEd had a reliable infrastructure and was making investments to make it even more so. “We offer data center customers the reliability they need and technical and financial support to run an energy efficient operation,” he said.

ComEd’s two dedicated account managers that focus exclusively on the data center market currently work with more than 60 data centers in northern Illinois. They will now also work with these and future clients to increase energy efficiency and offset the cost of these improvements through utility rebates.