Is ComEd a Monopoly? Half of Your Bill Is, and the Bill Shows You Which Half

Yes on the wires, no on the energy, and the reason the question keeps getting asked is that both answers arrive on the same piece of paper. A ComEd bill has a delivery section and a supply section. One of them is a regulated monopoly whose rates are set by state order. The other is a commodity ComEd buys under a state procurement plan and passes through at cost, and which you are free to buy from someone else instead. This page walks through what the filed tariff says about each half, who sets each number, and what the split actually came to on two ComEd bills we reconciled line by line.

The half that is a monopoly: delivery

ComEd owns the poles, wires, transformers and meters in northern Illinois, and nobody else is going to build a second set down the same street. Illinois treats that the way most states do: one wires company per territory, with its prices set by a regulator instead of by competition.

The regulator is the Illinois Commerce Commission. ComEd's delivery charges are filed with the ICC as tariff sheets, and the current residential and commercial delivery rates carry a footer that says which order created them: the ICC's order of January 16, 2025 in Docket No. 24-0378, with an order on rehearing dated July 17, 2025. That docket is a multi-year rate plan, which is why the rate sheets print a column for 2025, a column for 2026 and a column for 2027, each followed by "& ADJ" for the filed adjustment factors that turn the printed figure into the rate a bill applies.

Those charges do not change when you switch suppliers. ComEd's own tariff for delivery-only service, Rate RDS (Retail Delivery Service), has a section titled "Relationship of the Retail Customer, RES, and the Company," where RES means Retail Electric Supplier. That section exists because the tariff assumes a customer can buy energy from a third party while ComEd delivers it. The delivery rate is the same either way.

On a residential bill the delivery section is the Customer Charge, the Standard Metering Charge, the Distribution Facilities Charge and the small Illinois Electricity Distribution Charge. On a commercial bill the Distribution Facilities Charge becomes a demand charge set by a single thirty minute interval, and it is usually the largest line on the whole bill.

The half that is not: supply

The energy itself is a different arrangement. Illinois opened electricity supply to competition, and ComEd's filed tariff is written around that fact.

A customer who does not choose a supplier takes ComEd's default supply under Rate BES, Basic Electric Service. The tariff describes that service as the Company procuring "all required electric energy, energy to satisfy losses, electric generation capacity, volumetric risk management, transmission services, ancillary transmission services" and passing them through. The rider that sets the price, Rider PE (Purchased Electricity), quotes the statute it operates under, Section 16-111.5 of the Public Utilities Act: ComEd recovers its cost of procuring power "with no mark-up or return on the price paid by the [Company] for that supply." The procurement itself follows a plan developed under the Illinois Power Agency Act and approved by the ICC.

So on the supply half ComEd is a buyer's agent working from a state plan, not a seller with a margin. The resulting rate is the Price to Compare, posted by the ICC every month, and the name says what it is for: it is the number a competing supplier's offer is measured against.

A customer who does choose a supplier leaves Rate BES. The tariff's own words: a retail customer "may elect to terminate service hereunder and obtain electric power and energy supply from a Retail Electric Supplier," at which point delivery continues under Rate RDS. The supply section of the bill then carries the supplier's charges instead of ComEd's, and the delivery section does not move.

Who sets which number

Three bodies show up on one bill, and the tariff names all three.

section of the bill	what sets the rate	where it is filed
Delivery (customer charge, metering, distribution facilities)	ICC rate order, multi-year plan	ComEd Ill. C.C. No. 10 informational sheets, Docket 24-0378
Supply, if on ComEd's default (the Price to Compare)	ICC-approved procurement plan under the Illinois Power Agency Act; passed through at cost under Rider PE	Posted monthly by the ICC; Rider PE supplements in the ratebook
Supply, if on a retail supplier	The supplier's contract	Not in ComEd's ratebook
Transmission	Tariffs on file with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, referenced by Rate BES	FERC, through PJM
Riders and adjustments (Carbon-Free Energy Resource Adj, Renewable Portfolio Standard, and the rest)	Illinois statutes, each with its own rider	ComEd ratebook, filed with the ICC

That table is the honest answer to "is ComEd a monopoly." One row is a monopoly in the ordinary sense: a single provider with regulated prices. One row is a pass-through. One row is a competitive market. The rest is statute.

What the split came to on two reconciled bills

The structure only matters in dollars, so here is the split on two real ComEd bills, each one we rebuilt from its own line items and checked against the printed subtotals.

A home, May 1 to June 2, 2026, 1,518 kWh, on ComEd's default supply. Total $281.06.

section	amount	share
Supply (the competitive half): Electricity Supply Charge $131.72, Transmission Services Charge $26.14, Purchased Electricity Adjustment $3.49	$161.35	57 percent
Delivery (the regulated half): Customer Charge $15.50, Standard Metering Charge $3.87, Distribution Facilities Charge $96.13, IL Electricity Distribution Charge $1.94	$117.44	42 percent
Taxes, fees and credits, nine rider lines and state tax, netting out	$2.27	1 percent

On that bill the monopoly half was $117.44. The supply half was priced at the posted Price to Compare of 10.399 cents, which is what the bill printed and what the ICC posted for June 2026; the two agree. A supplier offer would have replaced the $161.35 and left the $117.44 alone.

A small business, August 25 to September 23, 2025, 3,873 kWh across two meters, on a retail supplier. Total $996.03.

section	amount	share
Supply, billed by the retail supplier at 7.474 cents per kWh	$289.48	29 percent
Distribution Facilities Charge, 40.91 kW times $14.59 per kW	$596.88	60 percent
Other delivery: customer charge, metering, distribution tax, meter lease	$46.17	5 percent
Taxes and fees, including a Carbon-Free Energy Resource Adjustment credit of $39.93	$63.50	6 percent

This account had already done the thing people mean by "getting off ComEd." It bought its energy from a competitor. ComEd still delivered every kilowatt hour, and ComEd's regulated delivery lines came to $643.05, about 65 percent of the bill. The single largest line, the $596.88 demand charge, was set by one half hour on one weekday morning, and no supplier could touch it. That is the pattern behind why switching suppliers so often barely moves a commercial bill.

Two bills, two shapes. On the home, the competitive half was bigger. On the shop, the monopoly half was. Which shape yours is cannot be read off a rate; it is read off the two halves of your own bill, side by side.

What "you cannot get off ComEd" actually means

It means the delivery section. There is no second wires company to switch to, and the tariff has no provision for one. What you can do is choose who fills the supply section, and whether that is worth doing depends on the offer against the posted Price to Compare on the same window.

It does not mean ComEd sets the supply price to its own benefit. Under Rider PE that price is a pass-through of what the state procurement plan bought, with no markup, reviewed by the ICC. When the Price to Compare rises, as it did in June 2025 and again in June 2026, that is the procured cost of energy and capacity moving, not a monopoly raising its price. Why Illinois electric rates are going up follows that record month by month.

And it does not mean the regulated half is fixed. Docket 24-0378 filed a 2026 column above the 2025 column for the residential customer charge and distribution facilities charge, and a 2027 column after that. A regulated price is a price set by order, which is not the same as a price that stands still.

See which half is which on your own bill

The free ComEd bill check reads a bill PDF, rebuilds each line, splits the total into the supply half and the delivery half against the bill's own printed subtotals, and checks the printed Price to Compare against the ICC's posting for the months the bill covers. It does not sell energy and it does not recommend a supplier. It shows which half of the bill is which, in your own dollars, which is the only form of this question that has a definite answer.