The Straight Answer: You Can't Switch Right Now — and That's Mostly Fine
Maryland is technically a retail-choice state: the law lets you buy your electricity supply from a competitive supplier instead of your utility. In practice, that choice no longer exists. After Maryland passed SB 1 in 2024 — a law that capped what suppliers can charge and banned the sales tactics the industry ran on — residential suppliers responded by leaving the market. Since January 1, 2025, essentially zero suppliers have been actively offering new residential contracts in Maryland. More than 40 companies still hold supplier licenses, but the licenses are paper — almost nobody behind them will actually sell you a plan.
So is switching worth it? The question is moot: there is nothing to switch to. Nearly every Maryland household is now on Standard Offer Service (SOS), the regulated default supply from their utility. And here's the part most write-ups bury: that's arguably a win. Before the freeze, the retail market's signature product was the plan that cost more than the default — a teaser rate that ballooned after a few months, sold at the door on commission. If you were stuck on one of those, the market freezing is the best thing that ever happened to your bill.
How Maryland's Market Actually Works Now
Your electric bill has two halves. Delivery pays your utility for the wires, poles, and meters that bring power to the house — regulated, no choice there, same as every state. Supply pays for the electricity itself, and that's the half Maryland once opened to competition.
With competitive suppliers gone, supply defaults to Standard Offer Service. SOS is not your utility naming its own price: utilities buy the power through competitive wholesale procurements overseen by the Maryland Public Service Commission, then pass the result through on your bill. Post-2024, SOS is effectively the entire residential market.
The state's official shopping site is MD Electric Choice, and it tells you everything about the current market: its own homepage now leads with an explainer called "why you may see fewer offers." When the state-run comparison tool opens by explaining why there's nothing to compare, believe it. Bookmark the site anyway — if suppliers ever return, legitimate offers will show up there first.
Why the Market Froze: SB 1 (2024)
Deregulated retail electricity has a shabby track record for households. In states with still-active markets — Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois, New York — the honest verdict on switching is usually negative: most residential plans end up costing more than the default. Maryland ran the same experiment, got the same result, and in 2024 the General Assembly did something unusual about it. SB 1 rewrote the rules for residential supply:
- Price cap: suppliers can't charge residential customers more than the trailing 12-month average of Standard Offer Service — the overpriced plan became illegal.
- Commission ban: sales commissions on residential contracts were banned, killing the engine behind door-to-door and telemarketing sales.
- 12-month limit: contracts are capped at 12 months, ending multi-year lock-ins.
- Dual billing: suppliers must bill separately instead of riding inside the utility bill, where their charges were easy to miss.
Read that list from a supplier's chair: you can't price above the default's recent average, can't pay anyone to sell, can't lock customers in for years, and have to run your own billing. The business model those rules eliminated was, for most suppliers, the business model. They didn't adapt — they left. Local coverage (Baltimore's WMAR-2 News, among others) tracked the exodus, and since January 1, 2025 the residential shelf has been effectively empty.
What Electricity Costs in Maryland
Frozen market or not, the bill still arrives. As of April 2025, Maryland households paid an average of 19.1¢ per kilowatt-hour (EIA) — the freeze changed who you buy power from, not what power costs. The chart below shows the federal price history for Maryland from 1990 through 2025, plus a projection.
Full Maryland electricity price data (1990–2025)
| Year | Maryland (¢/kWh) | US avg (¢/kWh) |
|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 7.2 | 7.8 |
| 1991 | 7.9 | 8.0 |
| 1992 | 8.0 | 8.2 |
| 1993 | 8.2 | 8.3 |
| 1994 | 8.4 | 8.4 |
| 1995 | 8.4 | 8.4 |
| 1996 | 8.3 | 8.4 |
| 1997 | 8.3 | 8.4 |
| 1998 | 8.4 | 8.3 |
| 1999 | 8.4 | 8.2 |
| 2000 | 8.0 | 8.2 |
| 2001 | 7.7 | 8.6 |
| 2002 | 7.7 | 8.4 |
| 2003 | 7.7 | 8.7 |
| 2004 | 7.8 | 9.0 |
| 2005 | 8.5 | 9.5 |
| 2006 | 9.7 | 10.4 |
| 2007 | 11.9 | 10.7 |
| 2008 | 13.8 | 11.3 |
| 2009 | 15.0 | 11.5 |
| 2010 | 14.3 | 11.5 |
| 2011 | 13.3 | 11.7 |
| 2012 | 12.8 | 11.9 |
| 2013 | 13.3 | 12.1 |
| 2014 | 13.6 | 12.5 |
| 2015 | 13.8 | 12.7 |
| 2016 | 14.2 | 12.6 |
| 2017 | 14.0 | 12.9 |
| 2018 | 13.3 | 12.9 |
| 2019 | 13.1 | 13.0 |
| 2020 | 13.0 | 13.2 |
| 2021 | 13.1 | 13.7 |
| 2022 | 14.5 | 15.0 |
| 2023 | 16.6 | 16.0 |
| 2024 | 17.9 | 16.5 |
| 2025 * | 19.5 | 17.3 |
Source: US EIA, average residential retail electricity price. Values in cents per kWh. * 2025 is preliminary.
The long-run direction is up, and no supplier plan was ever going to change that — retail suppliers bought from the same wholesale market the SOS procurements do. Which means the levers that remain are all on your side of the meter: how much you use (heating and cooling dominate — our HVAC guide covers the biggest line item), whether your home's wiring and panel can handle upgrades like a heat pump or an EV charger (start with our electrical guide), and whether you generate any of it yourself. At 19.1¢ per kWh (April 2025), every kilowatt-hour a rooftop system produces is one you don't have to buy — our solar panels guide walks through the payback math.
The Two Traps That Survived the Freeze
A frozen market runs fewer scams than a hot one — that's the quiet upside of SB 1. Two traps remain.
Trap one: legacy contracts that auto-renew. If you signed with a retail supplier before 2025, your contract didn't vanish when the market froze. Legacy contracts can still auto-renew under the new caps — legally, and silently. The cap limits the damage (a renewal can't exceed the trailing 12-month SOS average), but "capped" isn't the same as "cheapest," and there's rarely a reason to stay.
Trap two: anyone selling you a Maryland electricity plan right now. Since essentially no supplier is actively offering new residential contracts, a knock on the door, a phone call, or an official-looking letter pitching one deserves maximum suspicion by default. SB 1 banned the commissions that put salespeople in the field, so the legitimate industry has no one out there selling. The classic move to refuse: "Can I see your bill?" — your account number is enough to switch your service without your meaningful consent. Verify any offer against MD Electric Choice before sharing anything.
If the Market Ever Thaws: A Five-Point Checklist
SB 1 froze the market; a future legislature could rewrite it, or suppliers could find a model that works under the caps. If real offers return, shop like this:
- Compare against the default, always. The only number that matters is the supplier's rate versus your utility's current SOS rate. Below it, keep reading; above it, stop.
- Calendar the contract end date the day you sign. Whatever the renewal rules are, the profitable customer is the one who forgets.
- Never sign at the door or on an unsolicited call. A real deal survives 24 hours of thinking it over.
- Check the license. Suppliers must be licensed by the Maryland Public Service Commission and listed on MD Electric Choice. Not there, not legitimate.
- Do the math on thin savings. Under SB 1's cap, no legal offer can beat SOS by much — decide whether a few dollars a month is worth tracking another contract.
Sources
Everything above is 2026-current and sourced from: MD Electric Choice — "Why you may see fewer offers" (the state's own explanation of the frozen market); Maryland General Assembly — SB 1 (2024) (price cap, commission ban, 12-month limit, dual billing); WMAR-2 News Baltimore (coverage of the supplier exodus); and the US EIA (19.1¢/kWh Maryland residential average, April 2025; chart history 1990–2025). We review these figures every six months.