News Stories
Sponsored by Earth Etch. Regulatory insight and compliance solutions for today’s energy markets.
ORMD Annual 2024 Report Now Available!
From the Executive Summary in the Office of Retail Market Development Annual Report 2024:
Market Participation – Statewide, the number of ARES certified by the ICC to serve retail customers has decreased over the last couple of years. However, 2024 saw a 20.3% increase in total customers served by an ARES and the amount of electricity supplied by ARES in the marketplace remained steady. Table 1 summarizes the quantity of monthly ARES customers and their monthly usage by utility territory and customer class.
Market Competitiveness – Changes in the electric supply market from 2022-2023 resulted in an overall increase in competitiveness within the marketplace; however, there was an overall decrease in competitiveness in 2023-2024. The largest decrease in competition was with residential customers within the ComEd territory. The decrease in competition of residential ComEd customers and non-residential Ameren customers was significant enough to shift the designation from competitive to moderate concentration. The only shift in designation from high concentration to moderate concentration resulting from increased competition was for residential customers within the Ameren territory. Table 3 summarizes the market competitiveness in each utility territory, broken out by non-residential and residential HHI values.
Consumer Offers and Spending PlugIn – Illinois.gov is the ORMD’s consumer resource website dedicated to educating Illinoisans about the electric marketplace, including what products ARES currently offer. It is important to note that ARES are not statutorily required to list offers on the Plug In Illinois website ; ARES participate based on internal business determinations. Accordingly, the list of offers is not comprehensive of all ARES offers within the State. At the end of May 2024, 52 unique residential offers were posted in the ComEd service territory while 19 unique residential offers were posted for the Ameren territory. A majority of these were fixed rate offers, lasting at least 12 months.
Plug In Illinois also lists municipal aggregation program4 offerings. As of May 2024, 520 active municipal aggregation programs were posted in the ComEd and Ameren territories. The number of active aggregation programs increased significantly from 2023. During the reporting period, the average rate for a municipal aggregation program in the ComEd territory was 7.00 cents per kWh and 9.44 cents per kWh in the Ameren territory.
On average, residential ARES customers in the ComEd territory paid around $13.94 million more per month during the past twelve months when compared to the ComEd Price-to-Compare (PTC) and $14.58 million more per month during the last twelve months when compared to the ComEd PTC including the Purchased Electricity Adjustment (PEA).7 In terms of cents per kWh, residential ARES customers in the ComEd territory paid about 2.89 cents/kWh more when compared to the ComEd PTC only, and about 3.00 cents/kWh more when including the PEA.
On average, residential ARES customers in the Ameren territory paid around $9.26 million more per month during the last twelve months when compared to the Ameren PTC and $10.21 million more per month during the last twelve months when compared to the Ameren PTC including the PEA. In terms of cents per kWh, residential ARES customers in the Ameren territory paid about 2.13 cents/kWh more when compared to the Ameren PTC and about 2.35 cents/kWh more when including the PEA.
Read the entire ORMD report at the link below.
