Can You Choose Your Electricity Provider in Illinois?
Yes. Illinois is a deregulated state: if ComEd delivers your power (Chicago and most of northern Illinois) or Ameren Illinois does (most of the rest of the state), you can buy the supply portion of your bill from an alternative retail supplier instead of the utility. A few dozen suppliers are licensed to sell to Illinois homes, and in ComEd territory alone there are typically 50-plus residential offers on the board.
Here's the part the salesperson at your door will skip: for individual households, switching rarely pays. The Citizens Utility Board — Illinois's nonprofit utility watchdog — ran the numbers in 2025 and found that customers of alternative suppliers have lost more than $2 billion compared with plain default utility supply since 2015. Not saved. Lost. The one flavor of choice with a real track record here is municipal aggregation, where your whole town negotiates a bulk deal. This page covers how the market works, what switching has actually cost people, and the traps that keep the Illinois Attorney General busy.
How the Illinois Market Actually Works
Your electric bill has two halves. Delivery — wires, poles, meters, storm crews — always belongs to ComEd or Ameren, is regulated, and doesn't change no matter whom you buy from. Supply — the electricity itself — is the shoppable half. Switching suppliers changes only that line; the same utility still reads your meter and restores your power in an outage.
If you never choose anything, you get default supply. The utilities don't generate the power or mark it up: the Illinois Power Agency, a state agency, buys electricity for default-service customers through competitive procurements and passes it through at cost. The resulting supply rate is your Price to Compare — printed on your ComEd or Ameren bill and published on Plug In Illinois — and it's the number any competing offer has to beat after every fee is counted.
The official shopping site is Plug In Illinois, run by the Illinois Commerce Commission. It lists licensed suppliers' residential offers side by side with the utilities' Price to Compare. If an offer isn't listed there — or a salesperson steers you somewhere else to "verify" it — treat that as your first red flag.
The $2 Billion Scoreboard: What Switchers Actually Paid
Retail choice sounds like it should produce savings — dozens of companies competing for your business. A decade of Illinois data says otherwise. The Citizens Utility Board's 2025 analysis found that residential customers of alternative suppliers paid over $2 billion more than default supply would have cost them since 2015, including $258 million in the most recent year measured. In ComEd territory, switchers paid on average about 2.74 cents per kilowatt-hour more than the default rate.
The reason is structural, not bad luck. The Illinois Power Agency's at-cost procurement has no retail margin, no marketing budget, and no door-to-door commissions baked into it. Alternative suppliers must pay for all three, and that money comes from you — typically as an introductory rate that genuinely beats the Price to Compare for a few months, followed by a quiet drift upward once the intro term lapses and you've stopped looking. If you remember one number from this page, make it 2.74¢: the average price of believing the pitch.
Municipal Aggregation: The One Flavor That Usually Works
Municipal aggregation is the version of electric choice Illinois got right, and it's very common here: your city or village negotiates one bulk supply contract on behalf of every household in town, and residents are enrolled as a group unless they opt out. You get a letter, not a doorbell ring.
Aggregation tends to be the better-vetted flavor. The municipality negotiates with the leverage of thousands of meters and signs fixed terms in public — the polar opposite of a stranger on your porch with a clipboard and a quota. Town-negotiated deals are the main legitimate route to beating the default rate in Illinois. They're not automatic winners, though — an aggregation rate locked in before the market moves can end up above the Price to Compare, so glance at the comparison once a year even when your town did the shopping.
What Electricity Costs in Illinois
However you buy it, electricity in Illinois is no longer cheap: the average residential rate was 18.3¢ per kilowatt-hour as of April 2025 (US EIA), counting both supply and delivery. The chart below shows the federal price history for Illinois from 1990 through 2025, plus a projection.
Full Illinois electricity price data (1990–2025)
| Year | Illinois (¢/kWh) | US avg (¢/kWh) |
|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 9.9 | 7.8 |
| 1991 | 9.9 | 8.0 |
| 1992 | 10.3 | 8.2 |
| 1993 | 10.3 | 8.3 |
| 1994 | 10.0 | 8.4 |
| 1995 | 10.4 | 8.4 |
| 1996 | 10.3 | 8.4 |
| 1997 | 10.4 | 8.4 |
| 1998 | 9.9 | 8.3 |
| 1999 | 8.8 | 8.2 |
| 2000 | 8.8 | 8.2 |
| 2001 | 8.7 | 8.6 |
| 2002 | 8.4 | 8.4 |
| 2003 | 8.4 | 8.7 |
| 2004 | 8.4 | 9.0 |
| 2005 | 8.3 | 9.5 |
| 2006 | 8.4 | 10.4 |
| 2007 | 10.1 | 10.7 |
| 2008 | 11.1 | 11.3 |
| 2009 | 11.3 | 11.5 |
| 2010 | 11.5 | 11.5 |
| 2011 | 11.8 | 11.7 |
| 2012 | 11.4 | 11.9 |
| 2013 | 10.6 | 12.1 |
| 2014 | 11.9 | 12.5 |
| 2015 | 12.5 | 12.7 |
| 2016 | 12.5 | 12.6 |
| 2017 | 13.0 | 12.9 |
| 2018 | 12.8 | 12.9 |
| 2019 | 13.0 | 13.0 |
| 2020 | 13.0 | 13.2 |
| 2021 | 13.2 | 13.7 |
| 2022 | 15.7 | 15.0 |
| 2023 | 15.7 | 16.0 |
| 2024 | 15.9 | 16.5 |
| 2025 * | 17.7 | 17.3 |
Source: US EIA, average residential retail electricity price. Values in cents per kWh. * 2025 is preliminary.
The long-run pattern is the thing to internalize: a slow climb with occasional plateaus and no lasting retreats. Rising rates raise the stakes on everything above — they make a bad supplier contract more expensive and a good aggregation deal more valuable — and they steadily improve the payback math on generating your own power; our solar panels guide runs those numbers. The cheapest kilowatt-hour is still the one you never buy: insulation, air sealing, and a sane thermostat schedule will out-save any supplier switch on this page.
The Traps: Impersonators, Teaser Rates, Hidden Fees
Illinois's retail electricity market has a consumer-protection rap sheet, and it's current. In April 2025 the Illinois Attorney General announced a $12 million settlement with Direct Energy over deceptive sales practices; in December 2024, Palmco paid $3.5 million over similar claims. These are name-brand suppliers, not fringe operators — and the fact that settlements keep coming tells you the playbook still pays for itself.
The playbook, so you recognize it: someone at your door or on the phone implying they're "from ComEd," "from Ameren," or "with the state" — the utilities do not send people door-to-door to sell supply contracts. A request to "see your bill" or "verify your account number" — that number is the key to switching your service, so guard it like a card number. A teaser rate that flips to a variable rate after a month or two, plus a monthly fee the pitch never mentioned. Springfield has noticed: legislation pending in 2026 targets hidden fees and predatory door-to-door tactics. Until something passes, enforcement is after-the-fact and the caution is on you.
If You Do Shop: The Five-Minute Checklist
- Find your Price to Compare on your ComEd or Ameren bill (also published on Plug In Illinois). That's the number to beat — after all fees.
- Shop only on pluginillinois.org and confirm the supplier is licensed with the Illinois Commerce Commission.
- Price the whole contract: the rate after the intro period, any monthly fee, and the early-termination fee. A low headline rate plus a monthly fee can cost more than a higher flat rate.
- Calendar the contract end date. Expired fixed-rate deals typically roll onto month-to-month variable pricing — that post-expiry drift is where the losses live.
- Never sign at the door or on an unsolicited call. Take every offer overnight, minimum.
- Re-check at every renewal. A deal that beat the Price to Compare last year may quietly trail it this year.
And keep the exercise in perspective: supplier choice touches one line item on the bill. The wiring behind your walls decides whether the power you buy is safe to use — our electrical guide covers panels, breakers, GFCIs, and the warning signs that justify an electrician's visit.
Sources
Figures on this page are 2026-current. Official offer comparison and Price to Compare: Plug In Illinois (Illinois Commerce Commission). Average residential rate (18.3¢/kWh, April 2025): US EIA, Electric Sales, Revenue, and Average Price. Switching losses ($2 billion+ since 2015; $258 million in the latest year; 2.74¢/kWh ComEd-area premium): Citizens Utility Board 2025 analysis, as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times. Enforcement ($12 million Direct Energy, April 2025; $3.5 million Palmco, December 2024): Illinois Attorney General. We review these figures every six months.