Is ComEd Hourly Pricing Worth It in Winter?

People tend to ask this question in the wrong season, in both directions. Interest in ComEd Hourly Pricing spikes in June, when the risk is highest, and fades in December, when the rate is at its calmest. Winter is where Hourly Pricing quietly does well for most homes, and also where it matters least, because the decision is made by summer afternoons. This page gives you the measured winter, the exception that proves the rule, and how to weigh a good winter against a bad July.

What ComEd hourly prices looked like last winter

We hold the settled hourly price for the ComEd zone for every hour from June 2025 through July 2026. The three winter months, averaged across every hour of each:

month	all hours	overnight, 10 PM to 6 AM	afternoon, 2 to 7 PM	highest single hour
December 2025	3.60 cents	2.78	4.40	17.6 cents
January 2026	3.32 cents	1.79	4.81	66.1 cents
February 2026	3.80 cents	2.97	4.77	65.0 cents

For comparison, the three summer months of 2025 averaged 5.07, 4.85 and 3.83 cents, and July 2026 averaged 7.05 with an afternoon average of 14.58. Winter prices are lower, flatter, and far less exposed at the top. The afternoon average that reached 9.54 cents in June 2025 and 14.58 in July 2026 stayed between 4.40 and 4.81 last winter.

These are energy prices before ComEd's loss factor of 5.17 percent and two small uncollectible factors, so a bill runs a little above them. The comparison against the flat rate is not simply these numbers against the Price to Compare of 10.399 cents, because the flat rate embeds capacity and other supply costs that Hourly Pricing bills separately. But on the energy alone, a winter month averaging 3.5 cents against a flat supply rate above 10 is a wide gap, and it is the reason most Hourly Pricing homes see their best months between November and April.

The exception: cold snaps

January 2026 shows the shape of the risk. The month averaged 3.32 cents, the lowest overnight of the whole record at 1.79, and it also contained the highest winter hour, 66.1 cents, during a cold snap when gas demand for heating squeezed the supply available for power plants. February had a 65 cent hour of the same kind. Those hours are rare and short, but a home heating with electricity, or running a heat pump through a deep freeze, is drawing its hardest exactly when they occur.

That is the one winter case where the rate can turn against you: electric resistance heat or a heat pump without a gas backup, in a cold house, during a multi-day cold snap. The exposure is smaller than a hot July because the spikes are fewer and lower, but it is the same mechanism, and it lands on the same kind of home: one whose largest load runs at the grid's worst moment. The capacity charge, for what it is worth, is not part of this. It is set by five summer hours and winter usage never touches it.

How to weigh a good winter against a bad July

Winter cannot answer the question, because a good winter is the easy part. Most homes on Hourly Pricing come out ahead in the cold months whether they think about it or not. What separates a home that saves over the year from one that pays more is almost entirely summer: how much load lands in hot weekday afternoons, and what those afternoons do to the capacity charge for the following year.

So the way to use the winter numbers is as a floor, not a verdict. If your house has gas heat and modest winter use, the cold months add a reliable saving that a bad summer has to overcome. If your house heats with electricity, winter adds a smaller saving and a small tail risk. Either way the year is decided elsewhere, and the only way to see the whole year is to price your own hours on both rates, which is what is Hourly Pricing worth it describes and what we reconstruct from your own ComEd usage once you connect it.