ICC lops $25 million off ComEd rate request
The Illinois Commerce Commission on Thursday removed $25.4 million from ComEd’s $268.5 million rate reconciliation request, limiting the increases customers will pay for electricity delivery next year as supply costs continue to rise.
ComEd was seeking an annual reconciliation adjustment to recoup additional capital expenditures the utility said it incurred beyond its planned budget in 2024. In its decision, the ICC hit the bulk of cost overruns related to ComEd’s botched implementation of a new IT billing system last year.
“ComEd has failed to demonstrate that these costs were incurred prudently,” the ICC said in a press release Thursday.
The ICC approved $243 million of ComEd’s rate reconciliation request, which will be passed on to customers on their monthly bills starting in January. A ComEd spokesperson said the utility was still reviewing the ICC order and had no immediate comment Thursday evening.
According to ComEd, nearly one-fifth of the utility’s $268.5 million rate reconciliation request was related to cost recovery related to the billing upgrade – from the extended implementation of the new IT system to high-intensity support for customers during the bumpy rollout.
ComEd installed the customer information and billing management system in February 2024, which prevented millions of customers from paying their bills or checking their balances online for more than a week, while some solar customers did not receive their renewable energy credits for months.
“We are pleased that state regulators have reduced ComEd’s rate hike by $25 million by eliminating unnecessary and inappropriate spending — particularly costs related to fixing the utility’s error-prone billing system,” Jim Chilsen, a spokesman for the watchdog group Citizens Utility Board, said in a statement Thursday. “ComEd customers should not have to pay for the utility’s incompetence.”
ComEd customers are already facing higher delivery costs after the ICC last December approved a $606 million rate hike over four years as part of the utility’s electric grid improvement plan, increasing residential customers’ average bill by $1.84 per month through 2027.
The full reconciliation adjustment of $268.5 million would have increased ComEd’s residential customers’ average bills by an additional $3.41 per month in 2026, the utility previously said.
In addition to rising delivery charges, ComEd customers have seen supply charges — the cost of electricity — skyrocket over the past year, largely due to increased demand from the proliferation of power-hungry data centers.
PJM Interconnection manages the electricity supply network for 13 states, including ComEd’s 4.2 million customers in northern Illinois. In July, an annual capacity auction for expected reserve electricity needed during peak demand jumped 22% to a then-record high of $329.17 per megawatt-day, meaning even higher supply prices for ComEd and its customers starting in June 2026.
These supply fees could rise further in the future after PJM released the results of a new auction on Wednesday, setting the price of capacity at a record high of $333.44 per megawatt-day starting in June 2027.
Earlier this month, ComEd announced it would provide an $803 million rebate under the state’s Climate and Fair Jobs Act, which requires nuclear power plants to give their customers a carbon mitigation credit when energy prices are high.
The credits are a transfer from Constellation, Exelon’s former power generation subsidiary that became a standalone company in February 2022. The average ComEd customer can expect to receive about $13 per month in carbon credits on their electricity bills during the first five months of 2026, the utility said.
ComEd is also launching a low-income discount program in January, designed to reduce monthly bills to 3 to 6 percent of household income for qualified applicants.
rchannick@chicagotribune.com
