ComEd Will Pay You $40 a Year to Interrupt Your Air Conditioner. Is That a Good Trade?

ComEd's air conditioner cycling program is sold as free money for something you will not notice. The credit is small and specific, the permissions you grant are larger than the marketing implies, and both are written down in the filed tariff where anyone can read them.

Here is the trade as the rider actually states it, so you can decide rather than guess.

What you are paid

The current option, the Compressor Interruption Option, pays a credit of $10.00 per bill during the summer period, capped at $40.00 per year.

An older option, the Compressor Cycling Option, paid $5.00 per bill capped at $20.00 per year. It has been closed to new enrolment since April 15, 2024, though anyone already on it may stay on it as long as their service continues uninterrupted.

So the honest headline is forty dollars a year. That is the entire financial side of the decision, and it does not scale with how hot the summer is, how large your house is, or how much load ComEd actually takes from you.

What ComEd is permitted to do

This is the part worth reading before enrolling, and it is more expansive than "brief cycling on the hottest days."

Up to twelve hours on any day. The rider allows an event lasting no more than twelve hours in a day. Under the interruption option, that can mean the compressor is completely unavailable for cooling, or that it alternates every fifteen minutes between available and unavailable.

Between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., May 1 through October 31. That is the control window, in Central Prevailing Time. It covers essentially the whole of the cooling season and most of the waking day.

Without notice. The rider states that ComEd exercises remote control during an event without notice. There is no obligation to tell you an event is starting, which is the sharpest difference between this program and Peak Time Rebate.

For any reason. The tariff lists shortages of distribution capacity, shortages of transmission capacity, and the preservation of the availability of other load response resources, and it says events may occur for any reason including those. It is not limited to grid emergencies.

With a right of inspection. As a participant you grant ComEd permission to enter your premises and inspect the control devices, at any time without notice.

You also have to own the premises, be served through a separate meter, and have a central air conditioner that can accept the remote control device.

The comparison that actually decides it

Forty dollars a year is not the interesting number. The interesting question is what twelve hours of compressor interruption costs you on the days it happens, and that depends almost entirely on whether anyone is home.

If the house is empty on weekday afternoons, the trade is close to free. The compressor is idle or cheap to give up, the credit is real, and you are unlikely to notice an event.

If someone is home, or works from home, or the house holds heat badly, twelve hours is not a rounding error. Under the interruption option the compressor can be fully unavailable, not merely throttled, and the window covers the hottest hours of the hottest months. Forty dollars is roughly the cost of one restaurant meal, and it is the entire annual compensation for that exposure.

If you have medical or equipment reasons to hold a temperature, the no-notice provision is the disqualifier, not the credit size.

There is no penalty for leaving, and the rider provides for removal of the control device, so the decision is reversible. But it requires a visit, so it is not as frictionless as declining in the first place.

Why this program exists, and what that tells you

The rider's stated purpose is to let ComEd obtain temporary reductions in demand on the delivery system through prearranged voluntary reductions, in return for compensation. The listed reasons for calling an event include preserving the availability of other load response resources, which is a candid way of saying the program is a controllable resource ComEd manages alongside its others.

That framing is useful for you: you are selling an option on your comfort, and options are priced by what they are worth to the buyer. Forty dollars a year is what that option is worth to ComEd. Whether it is worth more than that to you is the whole decision, and nobody else can compute it.

You cannot have this and Peak Time Rebate

The rider is explicit that it is not available to any residential customer taking service under Rider PTR, the Peak Time Rebate. The two programs are alternatives, not a stack.

That makes the real choice a comparison rather than a yes or no. Rider AC pays a fixed, small, guaranteed credit for surrendering control of one appliance with no notice. Peak Time Rebate pays a variable, potentially larger credit at $1.00 per kilowatt hour avoided, but only if you respond to a notification and only for reductions below a modelled baseline built from your own usage.

Fixed and passive against variable and attentive. Pick on which of those describes your household, not on which one you were offered first. The Peak Time Rebate side of that choice turns on how the baseline is built, which is the part that decides what it actually pays.