A ComEd utility pole caught fire and torched several cars in a parking lot earlier in August, and now the utility says it has a new tool aimed at catching that kind of failure before it happens: drones paired with artificial intelligence, already used to scan 1,500 of its 1.3 million wooden poles for hidden decay.
The pilot program pairs drone-captured imagery with an AI system that evaluates the condition of each pole, according to CBS News Chicago. ComEd spokesperson Dale Player said the technology gives crews more effective and cost-effective access to the company's sprawling pole network, and the utility says it believes it is the first organization to attempt this kind of automated inspection at scale. Drones gather the images, and the AI system flags equipment that might need attention, letting ComEd act more proactively rather than waiting for a pole to fail.
That shift matters because ComEd currently runs on a 10-year inspection cycle for its wooden poles, the station reports, a pace that can leave rot undetected for years, especially decay hidden at the very top of a pole. Ground-based visual checks routinely miss that kind of internal damage, according to AI Atlas, which reports ComEd trained its computer-vision model on expert-labeled drone imagery of pole tops and reached 86% detection accuracy relative to human inspectors, assigning each pole a health score that feeds a prioritized replacement queue.
A Pole Fire That Could Have Been Tragic
The urgency behind the pilot is easy to trace to a specific incident: a ComEd pole fell in a parking lot earlier this month and lit a fire that torched several cars, per the station's reporting. ComEd is investigating that incident along with the condition of other poles in the area, and Player said the utility is conducting deep forensics on what went wrong. Tom Garritano, another figure quoted in the CBS Chicago report, called the incident extremely dangerous and said it could have been tragic.
The same storm sequence that has battered the region also knocked out an entire substation in Lansing during a recent storm, the station notes. ComEd's broader 2026 storm tally underscores why pole failures have become such a pressing concern: the company recorded its 19th major storm event of the year in early August, the highest number in more than two decades, according to a Business Wire report, with 96 mph wind gusts and tornadoes knocking out power to more than 410,000 customers.
Northern Illinois has already seen how badly a single failed pole can go: in January, a ComEd pole snapped and caught fire at Cumberland Avenue and Clara Drive in Niles, dropping live power lines over the roadway and cutting electricity to nearby residents until crews de-energized the lines, according to the Journal & Topics. And earlier this month, a contractor in Gurnee suffered life-threatening injuries after accidentally contacting a live overhead ComEd cable while taking measurements outside a home, Hoodline previously reported.
Doubling the Odds of Catching Trouble Early
ComEd says the analytics behind the pilot roughly double the effectiveness of its pole replacement decisions compared with older methods, per the CBS Chicago report. Jim Ortega, also quoted in that coverage, said the program should help reduce the number of poles that come down during storms. The approach is expected to be especially useful in hard-to-reach areas where sending a crew truck for a routine check is costly or difficult.
That capability builds on infrastructure ComEd has been developing for years. The utility launched its dedicated drone program in 2022, expanding from post-storm damage assessments and vegetation management into live-streamed mapping during active weather command operations, according to a case study published by Skydio. ComEd has also secured Federal Aviation Administration waivers for Beyond Visual Line of Sight flights using autonomous docking stations, a regulatory step that lets the utility inspect remote or hazardous infrastructure without dispatching crews, as detailed by Commercial UAV News.
ComEd says it plans to continue and eventually scale the drone and AI inspection work beyond the initial 1,500-pole sample, the CBS Chicago report notes. The pilot arrives as the utility pursues a far larger overhaul: in January, ComEd filed a four-year, $15.3 billion grid plan covering 2028 through 2031 with the Illinois Commerce Commission under the state's Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, aimed at hardening infrastructure against severe weather and rising electrical demand, according to Capitol News Illinois.
Growing Demand, Growing Scrutiny
Rising demand is coming from more than just storms. ComEd is also running a $1 billion substation expansion in Elk Grove Village to power a cluster of roughly 20 operational and 19 planned high-density data centers, Hoodline reported, adding heavy, continuous electrical load onto a distribution system that already includes 1.3 million wooden poles. Following the severe August storms, ComEd also sent more than 60 lineworkers and operators across state lines to help Northern Indiana Public Service Company restore power to more than 30,000 customers, illustrating how storm damage strains mutual assistance networks across the region.
The spending behind all of this modernization has not gone unquestioned. Illinois consumer advocate Citizens Utility Board previously filed formal testimony with state regulators seeking tens of millions of dollars in cuts to ComEd's requested delivery rate increases, citing affordability mandates under state law, Hoodline reported in a piece on the utility's proposed $678 million rate hike. As ComEd leans further into AI-driven infrastructure spending, that tension between grid modernization and ratepayer cost is likely to remain part of the conversation.
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