Updated: June 22, 2012 4:34PM

The Illinois Commerce Commission voted Friday to approve Commonwealth Edison’s smart-grid advanced metering improvement plan with some revisions.

It also voted to rehear arguments on the electricity rate that ComEd says it needs to finance the upgrades. The arguments relate to accounting issues and pension assets.

The smart-grid plan revisions include requiring the company to adopt additional tracking measures and language reiterating commission rules that require a site visit prior to disconnection of a meter for non-payment.

The commission denied the company’s request for a stay in the smart-meter installation timetable, saying that would be premature.

ComEd had asked for the stay until after a rehearing on the rate dispute, saying the lower rate made it uncertain it could meet its timetable of deploying the meters to all of its 4 million Northern Illinois customers in the next decade.

The ICC previously approved a rate that ComEd claims is inadequate, ruling that ComEd can’t earn a rate of return on a pension asset that isn’t fully funded.

ComEd had proposed a decrease in its electricity rates totaling $40 million to $50 million, but because of the pension issue, the ICC decided May 29 to cut customers’ rates by four times that, for a total of $168.6 million.

The ICC ruling, if upheld, would give ComEd customers a $1.70-a-month decrease in their bills, on average, through the end of the year.

The conflict prolongs a campaign ComEd waged last year for its $2.6 billion plan to upgrade its electric grid over 10 years. Its plan calls for upgrading substations to allow faster responses to power outages, installing digital “smart” meters to let people save money by changing when and how they use electricity and hiring more women- and minority-owned companies to help with the work.

“ComEd’s goal is to provide customers with better service, more choices and greater control over their electric bills,” ComEd said in a statement. “We are committed to working with regulators to make sure we can make the investments necessary to fulfill these promises. Today’s decision is a step in the right direction and we look forward to the Commission’s rehearing on this case.”

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