Winnetka sustainability update a year after IMEA extension

One year ago, the Winnetka Village Council renewed a contract with its power supplier amid strong opposition from community members. Village staff last week offered an update on how the supplier’s sustainability efforts.

Following a series of public meetings, trustees in June 2025 unanimously agreed to renew the Village’s contract with the Illinois Municipal Electric Agency, which has supplied Winnetka’s power since 1991.

During those meetings, the council heard from residents concerned about contiuing to partner with IMEA. Many concerns from the agency’s continued use of coal plants, but ultimately, the Village Council voted to renew.

At the council’s regular meeting on July 21, Nick Narhi, Winnetka’s director of water and electric, said IMEA had, in 2024, adopted its own sustainability plan, and provided an update on that plan’s progress for trustees and the public.

What’s IMEA up to?

Narhi credited his predecessor, the now-retired Brian Keys, as a “key player” in the development of the sustainability plan. Narhi, and previously Keys, serves on the IMEA board and said IMEA is nearing completion on the Bee Hollow Solar Project in St. Clair County, while also working on initiatives around voltage reduction, distributed-energy resource management, and battery energy storage.

He added that IMEA creates annual goals for the plan every year, and that the 2027 plan is currently being drafted. The hope, he said, is that the preliminary plan is ready next month, when it will then be shared with IMEA member communities for feedback.

IMEA’s goal is to have the plan adopted in December.

“It’s up to each community, each board member, to determine what that stakeholder engagement looks like,” Narhi said. “In this case, council can decide how they want to perform that work, delegate that work, and then inevitably the feedback should come back to me as the board member, and I will deliver that to the other board members.”

What about Winnetka’s power plant?

Narhi also provided an update on the village’s local power plant.

He said that during two recent heat waves, IMEA experienced a “grid emergency” that required the Village’s power plant to take over. The plant reportedly generated 1.8 million kilowatt hours, or 39% of the Village’s power, during those heat waves, while the grids utilized by IMEA provided 60%.

Additionally, Narhi praised the power plant’s staff for their work over the Fourth of July weekend. He said the plant generated power for 90 consecutive hours over four days.

“I really want to recognize everyone down at the power plant,” he said. “Those are very difficult conditions to work in the week of the holiday, and all the machines performed just as they were supposed to, and we met all of our contractual obligations. I’m very proud of the work that [the staff] did that week.”

Narhi also said that Phase One of the Village’s Long-Term Generation Plan is underway, which includes sighting of generators at the power plant.

As for the future, Narhi said those upgrades will be necessary, as Illinois is reportedly projected to have “resource adequacy” issues in 2029 and 2030, which he said may necessitate planned blackouts in order to preserve energy.

But with the long-term plan, Narhi said the Village will have enough local generation capabilities to provide 95% generation by 2030.

Village President Bob Dearborn commended the work the staff has done with local power generation, calling the plant “uber important to this community.”

“The ability to be 95% self-sufficient, ultimately, in a few years, that’s unique,” he said. “That’s a unique characteristic in this community compared to a lot of communities around us. We don’t take that lightly. That’s going to be a big investment that the residents are going to make in that plant.”

And lead service lines?

Narhi concluded his report with a brief update on lead service line replacements.

He said that as of Apri, 415 lead service lines have been removed, which account for 28% of the total within Winnetka.

The Village has a goal to replace 150 to 200 this year. In addition, 100 more voluntarily replacement slots became open after the Village decided to defer work on the Willow Road water main, allowing staff to reallocate $500,000 budgeted for that project to the lead service line program.

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