The Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago is the site of a proposed new microgrid project set to improve its resiliency as the historic and predominantly Black community pushes towards energy independence.

The microgrid will purportedly be the first of its scale found anywhere in the United States, and offers a major upgrade of a much smaller Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) run system, as well as a reduction in the phenomena known as Corona discharge.

According to the website Reasons to Be Cheerful, the project, which is being developed in unison with Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) and funded (in part) by a $4 million grant from the Department of Energy, passed efficacy tests but still faces a number of engineering and permitting hurdles. After those tests have been passed, the report states, the Bronzeville microgrid will power more than 1,000 homes, businesses, and even public institutions like the local Provident Hospital.

The plan means that Bronzeville could, with relative ease, disconnect itself from Chicago’s century-old citywide grid. It comes with a newly-commissioned mural from the utility (which still faces a fair bit of community criticism) meant to obscure the battery store’s industrial look with portraits of past neighborhood scions like Ida B. Wells and Lewis Latimer. 

The opportunity is being presented as an extension of the city’s Smart Grid retrofit and the Biden Administration’s massive infrastructure spending bill, which included nationwide provisions of $65 billion for electric grid infrastructure improvements of various kinds.

It will also help the community recover from the scars of economic racism and redlining that have held its development back for generations. A 2018 report on transformative placemaking from The Brookings Institution indicated the neighborhood, where approximately 43 percent of residents live in low-income households earning less than $25,000 a year, showcases an “untapped potential” for both increased retail opportunities and other forms of economic development provided the recent influx of investment, sometimes derided a tool of gentrification, is sustained. 

Bronzeville is in the process of being physically transformed by way of a new $1 billion city investment in public housing, another $4 billion Lakefront megadevelopments, and a new multimillion-dollar theater revitalization project led by actor Harry Lenix that will all come online in the next few years.

“When it comes to the jobs that exist to maintain and to build out all sorts of infrastructure around these kinds of projects, the goal is … prioritizing folks who are from those communities,” shares Bronzeville resident and associate director of community projects at Elevate Yami Newell. “As we see more projects like this come online, including renewable projects, who’s going to fill those jobs? Will the people that are working there look like the people who live there? I think Bronzeville gives us an opportunity to say, yes, we can do that."