Can You Choose Your Electricity Provider in New Jersey?
Yes — completely. New Jersey is a fully deregulated state: every residential customer can buy electricity supply from a licensed third-party supplier, and dozens of them are licensed to sell here. Your utility — PSE&G, JCP&L, Atlantic City Electric, or Rockland Electric — keeps delivering the power, reading the meter, and restoring outages no matter whose name is on the supply line. Switching never touches reliability.
Now the part the supplier ads leave out: whether switching is worth it depends almost entirely on which utility's territory you live in, and the honest mid-2026 answer is "sometimes, modestly." Competitive offers could trim roughly 11 percent off the supply portion of the bill for PSE&G customers and about 8 percent in Atlantic City Electric territory — real money for ten minutes of comparison shopping. In JCP&L and Rockland Electric territory, meanwhile, not one supplier was beating the default rate. If someone at your door in those areas promises savings anyway, they're either misinformed or counting on you not checking. This page shows you how to check.
How New Jersey's Market Actually Works
Your electric bill has two halves. Delivery — the poles, wires, meters, and storm crews — always belongs to your regulated utility, and you can't shop for it. Supply — the electricity itself — is the half that's open to competition, and it's the only thing a switch changes.
If you never choose a supplier, you get the default: Basic Generation Service (BGS). And BGS is not a lazy, padded utility rate. Its price is set once a year in a statewide descending-clock auction — a format where the offered price ticks down round by round until just enough power suppliers remain to cover the state's default load. The winning price is passed through to customers without utility markup; your utility earns nothing on BGS supply. The default, in other words, is already a competitively bid product — which is exactly why beating it is harder than the marketing implies.
The one place to see every live offer is NJ Power Switch, the official shopping site run by the state's Board of Public Utilities. It lists licensed suppliers' current residential offers by utility territory, next to the BGS price they have to beat, and it doubles as the license-lookup tool. Commercial comparison sites get paid to steer you toward particular suppliers; the state's list has no horse in the race.
What Electricity Costs in New Jersey
New Jersey households paid an average of 20.2¢ per kilowatt-hour as of April 2025 (EIA data) — delivery and supply combined. Here's the long view from federal data, 1990 through 2025, with a projection on the end:
Full New Jersey electricity price data (1990–2025)
| Year | New Jersey (¢/kWh) | US avg (¢/kWh) |
|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 10.4 | 7.8 |
| 1991 | 10.8 | 8.0 |
| 1992 | 10.9 | 8.2 |
| 1993 | 11.4 | 8.3 |
| 1994 | 11.5 | 8.4 |
| 1995 | 12.0 | 8.4 |
| 1996 | 12.0 | 8.4 |
| 1997 | 12.1 | 8.4 |
| 1998 | 11.4 | 8.3 |
| 1999 | 11.4 | 8.2 |
| 2000 | 10.3 | 8.2 |
| 2001 | 10.2 | 8.6 |
| 2002 | 10.4 | 8.4 |
| 2003 | 10.7 | 8.7 |
| 2004 | 11.2 | 9.0 |
| 2005 | 11.7 | 9.5 |
| 2006 | 12.8 | 10.4 |
| 2007 | 14.1 | 10.7 |
| 2008 | 15.7 | 11.3 |
| 2009 | 16.3 | 11.5 |
| 2010 | 16.6 | 11.5 |
| 2011 | 16.2 | 11.7 |
| 2012 | 15.8 | 11.9 |
| 2013 | 15.7 | 12.1 |
| 2014 | 15.8 | 12.5 |
| 2015 | 15.8 | 12.7 |
| 2016 | 15.7 | 12.6 |
| 2017 | 15.7 | 12.9 |
| 2018 | 15.4 | 12.9 |
| 2019 | 15.9 | 13.0 |
| 2020 | 16.0 | 13.2 |
| 2021 | 16.4 | 13.7 |
| 2022 | 16.7 | 15.0 |
| 2023 | 17.7 | 16.0 |
| 2024 | 19.3 | 16.5 |
| 2025 * | 22.6 | 17.3 |
Source: US EIA, average residential retail electricity price. Values in cents per kWh. * 2025 is preliminary.
The trend line matters more than any single year: nominal rates grind upward across the decades, and because BGS is re-auctioned annually, the default resets to wherever the wholesale market has moved — up or down — every single year. Don't build a switching decision on the hope that rates fall back to what you remember paying. And at 20-plus cents per kilowatt-hour, anything that cuts the kilowatt-hours you buy has outsized value here: insulation, an efficient heat pump, and — since every kWh your roof produces replaces one bought at retail — rooftop solar pencils out more interestingly in New Jersey than it does in cheap-power states.
Where Switching Pays — and Where It Doesn't (Mid-2026)
Live residential offers on NJ Power Switch as of mid-2026 broke down like this:
- PSE&G territory: the best market in the state — offers cutting roughly 11 percent off BGS supply.
- Atlantic City Electric territory: around 8 percent below BGS supply.
- JCP&L territory: no supplier beat BGS. Staying on the default was the winning move.
- Rockland Electric territory: the same — nothing on offer beat the default.
Two caveats before the 11 percent gets you excited. First, it's 11 percent off supply, not off your whole bill — delivery charges don't move, so the total-bill saving is meaningfully smaller than the headline number. Second, these are snapshots: supplier offers churn constantly, and the BGS benchmark resets at every annual auction. A territory that's a dead end this year can have real offers next year, and vice versa. The only verdict that counts is the one on NJ Power Switch the week you look.
The Traps: Slamming and the Fake "Utility" Rep
The Board of Public Utilities keeps a standing consumer alert about this market, and it's worth taking literally. The classic play: someone at your door — or on the phone — says they're "from the utility" or "with PSE&G" and asks to see your bill, supposedly to confirm you're getting a discount or to apply a credit. They are not from the utility. Your utility already has your bill; nobody who actually works there needs you to produce it.
What the visitor wants is your account number, because in a deregulated market it works like a signature: it's enough to move your supply service to a new company. Getting switched without your informed consent is called slamming, and the BPU's alert names the "let me just see your bill" doorstep script as the classic setup for it. Victims often discover the switch only when an unfamiliar supplier name — and sometimes a worse rate — shows up on the supply line weeks later.
Connect this back to the territory verdict above and you get New Jersey's cleanest scam detector: as of mid-2026 there was no offer beating BGS in JCP&L or Rockland territory. Any doorstep savings pitch in those areas contradicted every offer actually filed with the state.
If You Do Shop: A Ten-Minute Checklist
- Start at NJ Power Switch, nowhere else. Filter to your utility territory and see whether anything beats BGS at all this season.
- Compare per-kWh against your BGS price, and do the math on the supply half of the bill only — that's all that changes.
- Prefer a fixed rate for a defined term. Read what happens when the term ends; many contracts roll onto a variable month-to-month rate that needs re-checking.
- Hunt for fees. A monthly service fee or an early-termination fee can erase a small per-kWh discount on a typical home's usage.
- Calendar the contract end date the day you sign, with a reminder a month early — renewals shouldn't happen on the supplier's autopilot terms.
- Verify the license on NJ Power Switch before handing anyone your account number.
- Never sign at the door. A legitimate offer will still exist tomorrow, after you've checked it against the state's list.
One scope note: switching suppliers changes who charges you for generation, and nothing else. The panel, the breakers, and the wiring behind your meter are still entirely your responsibility — our electrical guide covers that side of the meter, including the warning signs that genuinely warrant an electrician.
Sources
Market structure, live offers, license lookup, and consumer alerts: NJ Power Switch (the official state shopping site) and the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. Average residential rate (20.2¢/kWh, April 2025) and the price-history chart: US EIA, Electric Power Monthly and EIA annual state price data (1990–2025; the projection is illustrative, not a forecast). Territory savings figures reflect live residential offers listed on NJ Power Switch in mid-2026 — they change frequently, so recheck before acting.