The Illinois Commerce Commission sliced $25.4 million from ComEd’s $268.5 million rate reconciliation request Thursday, holding down increases customers will pay for electricity delivery next year as supply costs continue to rise.
ComEd was seeking the annual reconciliation adjustment to recover extra capital expenses the utility said it incurred above its projected budget in 2024. In its decision, the ICC struck the bulk of overrun costs for ComEd’s botched implementation of a new computer billing system last year.
“ComEd failed to prove these costs were prudently incurred,” the ICC said in a news release Thursday.
The ICC approved $243 million of ComEd’s rate reconciliation request, which will be passed along to customers on their monthly bills beginning in January. A ComEd spokesperson said the utility was still reviewing the ICC order and offered no immediate comment Thursday evening.
Nearly one-fifth of the utility’s $268.5 million rate reconciliation request was connected to recovering costs from the billing upgrade – everything from the protracted implementation of the new computer system to high-intensity support for customers during the bumpy rollout, according to ComEd.
ComEd installed the customer information and billing management system in February 2024, which left millions of customers unable to pay bills or see their balances online for more than a week, while some solar customers didn’t receive their renewable energy credits for months.
“We are pleased that state regulators knocked $25 million off of ComEd’s rate hike by weeding out wasteful and inappropriate spending – especially costs connected to fixing the utility’s error-prone billing system,” Jim Chilsen, a spokesperson for watchdog group Citizens Utility Board, said in a statement Thursday. “ComEd customers shouldn’t have to pay for the utility’s incompetence.”
ComEd customers are already dealing with higher delivery charges after the ICC approved a four-year, $606 million rate hike last December as part of the utility’s power grid improvement plan, increasing average residential customer bills by $1.84 per month through 2027.
The full $268.5 million reconciliation adjustment would have raised average ComEd residential customer bills by an additional $3.41 per month in 2026, the utility previously said.
In addition to increased delivery charges, ComEd customers have seen supply charges – the cost of electricity – skyrocket over the past year, in large part due to increased demand from the proliferation of power-hungry data centers.
PJM Interconnection manages the electricity supply grid 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 $329.17 per Megawatt-day, meaning even higher supply prices for ComEd and its customers beginning in June 2026.
Those supply charges could go up even more down the road after PJM released the results of a new auction on Wednesday, setting the capacity price at a record $333.44 per Megawatt-day beginning in June 2027.
Earlier this month, ComEd announced it would be rebating $803 million as part of the state’s Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, which requires nuclear plants to issue customers a Carbon Mitigation Credit when energy prices are high.
The credits are a pass-through from Constellation, the former power generation subsidiary of Exelon that spun off as a stand-alone company in February 2022. The average ComEd customer can expect to receive about $13 per month in carbon credits on their electric bills over 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 3-6% of household income for qualified applicants.
rchannick@chicagotribune.com