Is your Illinois town's electricity aggregated, and should you beat that rate?
If you live in Illinois, there's a good chance your city or village already picked an electricity supply rate for you, and enrolled you in it automatically. It's called municipal aggregation, and it changes the question you should be asking.
What municipal aggregation is
Illinois law lets a community negotiate a single electricity supply rate on behalf of its residents and small businesses, then enroll everyone in it. Most of these are opt-out programs: you were signed up automatically and stay in unless you actively leave. Hundreds of Illinois communities in ComEd and Ameren Illinois territory run one. Your utility still delivers the power and reads your meter. Only the supply portion of your bill is affected.
How to tell if you're in one
Two quick checks:
- Read your bill.If the supply portion names a third-party supplier you don't remember choosing, or your town, you're probably in an aggregation program rather than on the utility default.
- Check the official list.The Illinois Commerce Commission publishes the communities running aggregation programs on Plug In Illinois's municipal aggregation list.
Why this changes the “should I switch?” question
Most electricity sites tell Illinois readers to switch off the utility default rate. If you're aggregated, that advice is simply wrong, because you're not on the default. The number a competitive offer actually has to beat is your aggregation rate, not the utility's Price to Compare. Aggregation rates are sometimes better than the Price to Compare and sometimes worse, depending on when your town locked its contract and where supply prices have moved since. So the honest comparison in Illinois is a three-way one.
- Your current rate— the aggregation rate (or the utility default, if you're not aggregated), from your bill.
- The Price to Compare— your utility's supply benchmark. See ComEd or Ameren Illinois.
- A competitive ARES offer — listed on Plug In Illinois. Only worth switching if it beats whichever of the first two you are actually paying.
You can opt out for free
Because aggregation is opt-out, you are never locked in by it. You can leave a municipal aggregation program at no charge and return to your utility's default supply, or choose your own competitive supplier instead. There is no exit fee for leaving an aggregation program, though a separate fixed-term contract you signed on your own could have its own early-termination fee. The practical move is simple: find out what you're paying now, compare it honestly against the Price to Compare and a clean fixed offer, and only act if the math actually works in your favor.