Electricity in New York (2026): Can You Choose Your Provider — and Should You?

The Straight Answer: You Can Choose — Just Don't Expect a Windfall

Yes, you can choose your electricity provider in New York. The market is deregulated: your utility still owns the wires, still fixes outages, and still sends the bill, but the supply portion — the electricity itself — can come from a competing seller called an ESCO (Energy Service Company). Roughly 150 ESCOs are licensed statewide.

Now the honest part, because New York's retail electricity market has one of the ugliest consumer track records in the country. The state's own Public Service Commission found that mass-market ESCO customers overpaid roughly $1.2 billion in just 2014–2016 — not saved, overpaid. That finding produced the PSC's "reset order" (adopted 2019, enforced since 2021), which rewrote the rules: a residential ESCO offer must now either guarantee savings against your utility's rate or be a fixed-price product backed 100% by renewables that you knowingly pay a premium for. Anything else is not a compliant residential offer.

So the 2026 verdict: switching can no longer quietly bleed you the way it did a decade ago, but the upside is modest and capped by design. You shop for small guaranteed savings or for green power at a known price — not for a dramatically smaller bill. If a pitch promises big savings, the pitch is the problem.

How New York's Market Actually Works

Every New York electric bill splits in two. Delivery is the utility's charge for wires, poles, and meters — you cannot shop this, ever. Supply is the electricity itself, and it's the only part an ESCO replaces.

If you've never chosen a supplier, you're on the utility's default, called full service supply. Here's the wrinkle most homeowners miss: full service is not a fixed price. The utility buys power on the wholesale market and passes the cost through at a rate that changes every month. New York publishes no fixed price-to-compare the way some deregulated states do, which makes honest comparison genuinely harder — and it means the default rate swings with the seasons. Con Edison customers know the summer spike intimately.

Your official shopping resource is the Department of Public Service's Power to Choose page, which links to the searchable offer database at documents.dps.ny.gov/PTC. Every legitimate residential offer should be findable through the state's tools. An offer that exists only at your front door or on a cold call is a red flag, not an exclusive.

The Reset Order: New York Had to Force Suppliers to Behave

The reset order explains everything odd about this market. For years ESCOs sold variable-rate plans that drifted far above utility pricing, and when the PSC ran the numbers it found mass-market customers had paid about $1.2 billion more than utility supply would have cost across 2014–2016 alone. The commission's response — adopted in 2019, enforced since 2021 — was blunt: to sell to New York households at all, an ESCO's product must either guarantee the customer pays no more than the utility would have, or be a fixed-rate, 100%-renewable product sold openly as a green premium.

Two consequences follow. First, the field thinned: about 150 companies hold ESCO status, but far fewer actually field compliant residential offers today. Second, enforcement is still catching violators years into the new regime — which tells you compliance is not something to take on faith. More on that below.

What Electricity Costs in New York

New York is expensive power country: as of April 2025, the average residential rate was 25.7¢ per kilowatt-hour (EIA). The chart below traces the full arc from 1990 through 2025, plus a projection — and the direction of that line is the real context for any switching decision.

Two takeaways. First, the long-term trend is up, and an ESCO can't rescue you from it — a guaranteed-savings product tracks the utility's rate; it doesn't escape it. Second, because full-service supply is priced monthly, your exposure peaks exactly when your usage does: a hot July in Con Edison territory means high consumption and a high market rate on the same bill. That's why the bigger wins in New York are usually on the usage side — taming the air-conditioning load (our HVAC guide covers how) — or on the generation side: at 25.7¢/kWh, every kilowatt-hour off your own roof is worth real money, which makes New York a state where the solar panels math deserves a serious look. And for what all those kilowatt-hours actually feed — your panel, circuits, and wiring — start with our electrical guide.

Community Choice Aggregation: The Switch Your Town Makes for You

New York has a third path besides "stay on full service" and "sign with an ESCO": Community Choice Aggregation. In a CCA, your municipality negotiates a supply contract on behalf of its residents — typically at a fixed rate, often with a renewable option — and enrolls the community by default, with the right to opt out. Westchester Power is the best-known example.

For most homeowners, CCA is the saner version of switching: the bulk contract gives your town leverage no individual shopper has, the terms are public documents rather than a salesperson's script, and nobody earns a commission at your door. If your community runs one, the question stops being "which ESCO?" and becomes "does the CCA's fixed rate look fair against my utility's recent full-service charges?"

The Traps: Real Cases, Real Dollar Figures

This market's history earns bluntness, so here is the current state of it.

Reset-order violations are still being caught. In April 2026, nine NRG-affiliated ESCOs were ordered to pay $50 million back to 278,000 New York customers over reset-order violations. That is the enforcement system working — but it also means hundreds of thousands of households were billed out of compliance before it caught up. A rule on paper is not a rule on your bill: check your supply charges even after you sign.

The door and the phone are where trouble starts. The classic play is a seller implying they're "from Con Edison" or "from your utility" and asking to see your bill — the account number on it is all they need to switch you. No legitimate offer requires a same-day signature at your door.

If You Do Shop: The Five-Step Checklist

1. Establish your real baseline. Pull 12 months of bills and add up the supply (full service) charges. With no fixed price-to-compare in New York, your own bill history is the only honest benchmark — a single winter or summer month will mislead you in either direction.
2. Shop only through the state's tools. Start at dps.ny.gov/power-choose, confirm the ESCO is licensed, and find the written offer in the DPS database. If it isn't there, walk away.
3. Get the product type in writing. Every compliant offer is one of two things: guaranteed savings versus the utility, or fixed-rate 100% renewable. For the first, ask exactly how and when the guarantee is settled. For the second, know the premium per kWh — it's a values purchase, not a savings play.
4. Calendar the contract end date and set a reminder a month out. Renewal terms are where good deals have historically gone bad.
5. Never sign at the door, and never show your bill to anyone who initiated the contact. Take the paperwork, close the door, and look the offer up yourself.

Sources

Figures on this page are 2026-current and come from primary sources: the New York Department of Public Service's Power to Choose consumer hub and its offer database (market rules, the reset order, ESCO licensing, CCA), and the US Energy Information Administration (25.7¢/kWh average residential rate, April 2025, and the price history charted above). The $1.2 billion overpayment finding (2014–2016) and the April 2026 order returning $50 million to 278,000 customers of nine NRG-affiliated ESCOs are New York Public Service Commission actions available through the DPS document system. We review these figures every six months.