CWLP Electric Division

City Water, Light & Power is the supplier of electricity for Springfield residents and businesses. CWLP's Electric Division facilities include the Dallman and Lakeside coal-fired power plants, three diesel generators, two sulfur dioxide (SO2) scrubbers serving the three Dallman plants, a maintenance facility and a waste water treatment plant. A selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system, which significantly reduces nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from the Dallman plants, was completed and placed in service in May 2003. In addition, the Division maintains an operations dispatch center and transmission and distribution (T&D) engineering office; an electric overhead, underground, substation and service office; three peaking turbines; and a number of substations. The utility is also in the process of constructing a new 200-MW coal-fired power plant.

In addition to owning our own generating capacity, CWLP has entered into two long-term contracts to purchase up to 120 megawatts of wind power.

CWLP earns
RP3 certification from APPA
for dedication to providing
safe, reliable electric service!

Since April 2006, CWLP has been certified a Reliable Public Power Provider (RP3) by the American Public Power Association (APPA). CWLP is currently one of only 84 public power utilities in the United States to receive this recognition. There are more than 2,000 public power utilities serving communities across the nation.

The RP3 program measures a utility's performance in four specific areas of proficiency—reliability, safety, training and system improvements.

CWLP uses five different indices to track its reliability and demonstrates an outstanding record in each compared to other public power utilities and Illinois' investor-owned utilities. The utility also participates in mutual aid programs that enable us to call upon other electric utilities across the country for repair and restoration assistance should a catastrophic outage event occur. This availability of additional manpower and service vehicles can dramatically shorten the duration of widespread outages, ensuring our customers will be without service for the shortest possible time.

In the safety category, the utility was judged on its use of employee safety manuals, monthly employee safety meetings and refresher training courses, audio-visual training materials, certified trainers, and other safe work practices.

The CWLP Electric Division uses a variety of traditional training opportunities, including conferences and workshops, in-house training sessions, college classes, and professional development courses to ensure engineers, linemen, construction crews and all other key division personnel will remain up-to-date regarding state-of-the-art work techniques and technology.

System improvement efforts also won high marks for the utility. CWLP conducts a variety of both routine and special infrastructure improvement projects aimed at enhancing system reliability and safety. These include a major transmission line rebuild completed in 2005, an overhead-to-underground line conversion program, and an upgrade of the utility's Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. In what will be the utility's largest system improvement ever, CWLP is in the process of building a new 200-MW power plant that is scheduled for completion by 2010.

Generation and T&D aren’t the only responsibilities of the Electric Division. The Division has also installed over 100 miles of high-speed fiber optic communications cable throughout Springfield. The initial purpose of the installation was to improve communications between CWLP facilities. With this goal accomplished the utility is now making it possible for other members of our community to gain access to the network and to benefit from the advantages it offers. To date, all of the city’s public schools, two parochial schools, Sangamon County Government, the University of Illinois at Springfield, and several businesses have connected to CWLP’s high-speed Wide Area Network (WAN) at a lower cost than they would have paid for a similar service from private-sector telecommunications companies.

Planning a landscaping or other project that will involve digging?
First call JULIE (Joint Utility Locating Information for Excavators) at 1-800-892-0123. JULIE will arrange for representatives from your utility service providers (electricity, water, cable, gas, telephone) to come to your property and mark the location of each underground service.

If you dig without calling JULIE first, not only could you be putting your life and property in danger, you can be held financially liable for any damages occurring to utility property.

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