Dear Prairie Grove community:

As we have maintained from the beginning, Eolian’s Monarch Grid BESS project is proposed for unincorporated McHenry County, and the county is now moving forward with the regulatory steps necessary to make that possible. On April 7, 2026, the McHenry County Planning, Environment and Development committee held a public meeting to consider amendments to the Unified Development Ordinance that would allow BESS and solar facilities, as required by Senate Bill 25. You can watch that meeting here.

We recognize that misinformation continues to circulate in the community, which is why we are making the following information and source documents available:

• ComEd, not the Village, identified the Silver Lake substation area as a high-potential site for large power projects. As early as June 2024, ComEd compiled and distributed a deck to data center developers, site selectors, and real estate brokers identifying Silver Lake Land as a prime location due to its proximity to a ComEd source substation and open, available land. That deck can be viewed here. The Village had no role in that effort. As a direct result of ComEd’s marketing, the Village began receiving unsolicited inquiries from data center brokers and Eolian in 2024 and 2025. In response, and out of concern that inaction could result in a neighboring municipality annexing the land and making decisions that would affect Prairie Grove residents, we consulted with a data center expert to understand what such a project would actually entail. No data center is planned for Prairie Grove or the Silver Lake Substation.
• The first contact the Village ever received related to the Monarch Grid project was September 17, 2024, when McHenry County Planning and Development reached out to ask if someone from our staff wanted to attend a meeting with Eolian. That message can be viewed here. Claims that the Village has been secretly coordinating with Eolian and/or data centers for years are not only contrary to the way the Village operates, they are simply unfounded and unsupported by the documentary record.

We offer additional context, including a December 2022 ComEd email announcing its BESS exploration efforts and a March 2026 response from our ComEd representative confirming how the Silver Lake site came to data center and battery farm developers’ attention.

Tonight, the Village Administrator and I will be attending a ComEd presentation on large-load connections and facilities associated with substations like Silver Lake, the substation that sits between Prairie Grove and Oakwood Hills. We will share any relevant information with the community as it becomes available.

We encourage residents to review these materials and draw their own conclusions as we continue to provide updates along official channels.

Sincerely,

David Underwood
Village President