At night, in the Loop, when no one was at work, in the mornings, and for most of the day (most especially during the summer), Chicago Edison’s sole power plant, fully capable of supplying its 3,200 kilowatts all the time, sat idle or was massively underutilized. As Insull once famously said: “If your entire plant is only in use 5.5 percent of the time, it is only a question of when you will be in the hands of a receiver.” He needed a way to sell power the rest of the day or his company would founder.
