DATUM
41.8781 N / 87.6298 W
SHEET 01, CHICAGO

FIG. 01
LAKEFRONT ELEVATION
NOT TO SCALE

Thursday, September 24, 2026 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS VOL. 1, NO. 1
DAILY CLEAN ENERGY COVERAGE HORIZON: LAKE MICHIGAN

The city, measured in megawatts.

A daily publication on clean and renewable energy in Chicago and Illinois: the grid, the lake, and a million flat roofs.

Illustrated elevation of the Chicago lakefront: a lake band below flat-roof towers with mullion grids, a low commercial slab with rooftop solar panels, and a large half-set sun disc
SHEET 01 / LAKEFRONT ELEVATIONLOOKING EAST OVER LAKE MICHIGAN
Read the lead story How we work
SEC. 01

Lead story

GRID + STORAGE

THE BRONZEVILLE CLUSTER

A neighborhood and the Mies campus next door wired the first microgrid cluster in the country

ComEd finished the Bronzeville Community Microgrid in 2024 and paired it with the Illinois Tech campus grid next door. Together they can island through a storm, and they are the nation's first utility-run cluster of its kind.

BY THE CHICAGO RENEWABLE ENERGY EDITORS SEPTEMBER 24, 2026 7 MIN READ
Diagram of two islanded microgrids, a rectangle and a circle, joined by an intertie to a substation with feeders to a load rail, solar blocks and battery ticks inside the islands
FIG. 01 / CLUSTER TOPOLOGYILLUSTRATIVE
SEC. 02

Briefs

THREE FIGURES
Section drawing of a flat-roof commercial building with three racked rows of rooftop solar panels, a glazed seven-bay facade, and a hatched foundation on a datum line
FIG. 02 / ROOFTOP SOLAR SECTIONFLAT ROOF

COMMERCIAL SOLAR

Chicago's roofs are its solar frontier

The city's building stock is a field of flat, unshaded, structurally honest roofs: warehouses on the Southwest Side, big-box retail along the arterials, parking structures, and the endless low factories of the industrial corridors. Illinois' 2021 climate law set the state on a path to 100 percent clean energy by 2050 with interim renewable benchmarks, and commercial arrays are one of the few places in a dense city where that buildout is physically simple. This publication tracks permits, interconnection queues, and the owners putting steel on those roofs.

See the sources we track

THE LAKEFRONT

The lake is the city's second grid

Lake Michigan moderates Chicago's weather, defines its horizon, and increasingly shapes its power. The lakefront concentrates the city's densest loads and its most visible experiments: district energy along the central lakefront, offshore wind studied in federal waters beyond the horizon, and a shoreline where cooling water, storm surge, and grid resilience meet. We cover lakefront energy as infrastructure, not scenery.

  • DATUM41.8781 N / 87.6298 W
  • SHORELINELAKE MICHIGAN, WESTERN BASIN
  • READLAKEFRONT ENERGY, COVERED AS INFRASTRUCTURE
Annual figure of twelve hatched monthly load blocks beneath a smooth solar bell curve with a sun disc at its peak
FIG. 03 / ANNUAL FIGUREILLUSTRATIVE

GRID + MARKETS

What a year of Chicago power demand looks like

Chicago sits inside PJM, the largest grid operator in the country, and its load curve is the city's true elevation profile: tall in the deep-winter heating peaks, long and flat through the shoulder months, and increasingly shaped in summer by air conditioning and electrification. The figure above shows that pattern in simplified form, monthly demand blocks under the sun's yearly arc. It is a diagram of the shape, not real measurements, and the shape is what drives your winter and summer power bills.

See what we watch
SEC. 03

How we work

ABOUT THIS PAGE

Chicago Renewable Energy is a small independent publication. We read the public record, PJM market reports, ICC dockets, ComEd filings, and city permits, and we write up what actually matters for people who live and work here.

We do not invent statistics. Charts are labeled when they are illustrative, sources are listed at the end of each story, and we correct errors when readers point them out.

  • COVERAGECHICAGO AND ILLINOIS
  • SOURCESPUBLIC FILINGS AND RECORDS
  • CHARTSLABELED WHEN ILLUSTRATIVE
  • CORRECTIONSWE FIX WHAT READERS CATCH
  • ILLUSTRATIONSOUR OWN WORK
Elevation drawing of a mullion-grid tower with a circular cut containing a small illustrated lakefront scene with solar panels
FIG. 04 / MULLION ELEVATIONLAKEFRONT TOWER
Three-panel illustration repeating one flat-roof building with rooftop solar panels in three tones, near-black then warm gray then charcoal
FIG. 05 / ROOFTOP SOLARFLAT-ROOF BUILDING
SEC. 04

Sources we watch

PUBLIC SOURCES

Public bodies this publication watches. Descriptions summarize each body's public role. We link to specific filings as they are published.

BodyWhat we watchCadence
PJM pjm.com. the regional grid operator's market and interconnection queues, capacity auctions, and state of the market reports that set the price of power across northern Illinois. DAILY
ICC icc.illinois.gov. the Illinois Commerce Commission's dockets on utility rates, grid modernization, and distributed generation tariffs. WEEKLY
ILLINOIS EPA epa.illinois.gov. agency carrying out the 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, including renewable buildout benchmarks and workforce programs. WEEKLY
COMED comed.com. the utility's distributed energy filings, microgrid programs, and grid investment plans for Chicago and northern Illinois. WEEKLY
CITY OF CHICAGO chicago.gov. building permits, energy benchmarking rules, and municipal sustainability programs that decide what gets built on the city's roofs. WEEKLY
SEC. 05

Latest entry

ANALYSIS

Panels on the wastewater pond: Illinois' strangest good idea (Oct. 10, 2026). Municipal treatment lagoons are the rare Illinois site almost nobody is fighting over.