Can You Choose Your Electricity Provider in Connecticut?
Yes — Connecticut is fully deregulated. Any residential customer can switch electricity supply to a licensed third-party supplier, and dozens are licensed to sell here. Your utility — Eversource or United Illuminating — keeps delivering the power, maintaining the poles and wires, and responding to outages no matter whose name is on the supply line. Switching never touches reliability; it only changes who you pay for the electricity itself.
Here's the part the door-to-door pitch skips: Connecticut's own regulator has already run the numbers on whether switching pays off, and the answer is mostly no. The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) analyzed five years of billing data and found that customers who signed with third-party suppliers overpaid the default rate by tens of millions of dollars a year, in aggregate. That's not a hunch or an advocacy group's estimate — it's the state's own enforcement office reading actual bills. For most homeowners, the honest move is to stay on the default and skip the sales calls entirely.
What Electricity Costs in Connecticut
Connecticut residential electricity averaged 29.4¢ per kilowatt-hour in 2025 (EIA preliminary data) — among the highest rates in the country. Here's the long view from federal data, with a projection on the end:
Full Connecticut electricity price data (1990–2025)
| Year | Connecticut (¢/kWh) | US avg (¢/kWh) |
|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 10.0 | 7.8 |
| 1991 | 10.5 | 8.0 |
| 1992 | 11.1 | 8.2 |
| 1993 | 11.4 | 8.3 |
| 1994 | 11.5 | 8.4 |
| 1995 | 12.0 | 8.4 |
| 1996 | 12.1 | 8.4 |
| 1997 | 12.1 | 8.4 |
| 1998 | 12.0 | 8.3 |
| 1999 | 11.5 | 8.2 |
| 2000 | 10.9 | 8.2 |
| 2001 | 10.9 | 8.6 |
| 2002 | 11.0 | 8.4 |
| 2003 | 11.3 | 8.7 |
| 2004 | 11.6 | 9.0 |
| 2005 | 13.6 | 9.5 |
| 2006 | 16.9 | 10.4 |
| 2007 | 19.1 | 10.7 |
| 2008 | 19.5 | 11.3 |
| 2009 | 20.3 | 11.5 |
| 2010 | 19.3 | 11.5 |
| 2011 | 18.1 | 11.7 |
| 2012 | 17.3 | 11.9 |
| 2013 | 17.6 | 12.1 |
| 2014 | 19.8 | 12.5 |
| 2015 | 20.9 | 12.7 |
| 2016 | 20.0 | 12.6 |
| 2017 | 20.3 | 12.9 |
| 2018 | 21.2 | 12.9 |
| 2019 | 21.9 | 13.0 |
| 2020 | 22.7 | 13.2 |
| 2021 | 21.9 | 13.7 |
| 2022 | 24.6 | 15.0 |
| 2023 | 29.9 | 16.0 |
| 2024 | 28.8 | 16.5 |
| 2025 * | 29.4 | 17.3 |
Source: US EIA, average residential retail electricity price. Values in cents per kWh. * 2025 is preliminary.
That 29.4¢ figure is up 115% since 2005, and the last decade alone has run at roughly 3.4% a year — a steady, compounding climb rather than a single spike. Nothing about that trend is likely to reverse: wholesale power costs and grid delivery charges both feed into it, and Standard Service simply passes wholesale movements through every six months rather than shielding customers from them. At this price per kilowatt-hour, anything that cuts the kilowatt-hours you buy carries outsized weight in Connecticut — insulation, an efficient heat pump, and, since every kWh your roof generates replaces one bought at nearly 30 cents, rooftop solar pencils out more favorably here than in most of the country.
How Connecticut's Market Actually Works
If you never pick a supplier, you get the default: Standard Service (sometimes called the Standard Service Offer). It is not a padded, take-it-or-leave-it utility rate — it's set through a competitive procurement process that Eversource and United Illuminating run under PURA oversight. The utilities buy power in advance in laddered six-month "tranches," with rates resetting every January 1 and July 1, through PURA-approved RFPs awarded to wholesale suppliers. Under recent legislation, at least 25% of Standard Service load must be bought directly from the ISO-NE wholesale market. The result is a fixed rate for each six-month period, not a live spot-market pass-through — Eversource residential supply was 12.64¢/kWh and UI was 13.695¢/kWh effective January 1, 2026, with both rates later reduced effective May 1, 2026.
The one place to compare live third-party offers is the EnergizeCT Rate Board, the official comparison site run under PURA. You can also start at PURA's own consumer-choice explainer for a plain-language walkthrough of how switching works. Both are free, run by the regulator, and carry no incentive to steer you toward a particular supplier — unlike most commercial comparison sites.
Why Switchers Usually Lose Money
PURA's Office of Education, Outreach, and Enforcement analyzed five years of billing data (January 2017–December 2021) and found that customers on third-party supplier contracts overpaid Standard Service by an estimated $25–37 million per year — roughly $151 million cumulatively. In 2021 alone, supplier customers paid an average of $136 more per year than they would have on Standard Service. About two-thirds of residential customers who signed with a third-party supplier ended up paying more than the default, and the harm was concentrated among low-income households — the customers least able to absorb it.
Connecticut has already closed off the worst version of this trap by law: since 2015, the state bans both variable-rate residential electric supply contracts and early-termination fees, so the classic "teaser rate rolls into a market rate" scheme that burns switchers in less-regulated states can't legally happen here. But PURA's data shows the damage doesn't require a variable-rate trick — plenty of fixed-rate contracts still price above Standard Service once the initial term matures or silently renews at a higher rate. That's the piece homeowners miss: a fixed rate protects you from a spike mid-contract, but it doesn't protect you from having signed a bad number to begin with, or from a renewal that quietly resets higher.
A Practical Checklist
- Find your current Standard Service rate on your bill or the utility's published rate schedule — that's the number every offer has to beat, not just approach.
- Shop only at the EnergizeCT Rate Board, never a cold call or a doorstep pitch. If a "rate comparison" site isn't energizect.com, treat it as advertising, not a neutral source.
- Insist on fixed-rate only. Variable-rate residential contracts are illegal in Connecticut, so any supplier pushing one is already violating the rules you're supposed to be protected by.
- Read the renewal terms before you sign — the rate that renews after your term ends is usually where switchers quietly start overpaying.
- Calendar the contract end date with a reminder a few weeks early, so a renewal never happens on autopilot.
- Remember you can leave anytime, penalty-free. With no early-termination fees, there's no cost to reverting to Standard Service the moment a supplier contract stops looking competitive.
- When in doubt, default to Standard Service. PURA's own analysis found it beat third-party contracts for roughly two out of three residential switchers over five years — that's the state's own regulator, not a marketing claim.
One scope note: choosing a supplier only changes who bills you for generation. The panel, breakers, and wiring behind your meter remain entirely your responsibility — our electrical guide covers that side of the meter, including the warning signs that genuinely call for an electrician.
Sources
Market structure, Standard Service procurement, and the official shopping site: EnergizeCT Rate Board and PURA's consumer-choice explainer. Switcher overpayment analysis (2017–2021 billing data, $25–37M/year, ~$151M cumulative, two-thirds of switchers overpaying): CT News Junkie, April 2023, reporting on PURA's Office of Education, Outreach, and Enforcement findings. Standard Service rates effective January and May 2026: Office of Consumer Counsel, January 2026 alert. Variable-rate and early-termination-fee ban: Utility Dive and Connecticut consumer protection guidance. Average residential rate (29.4¢/kWh, 2025 preliminary) and the price-history chart: US EIA, Electric Power Monthly and EIA annual state price data.