Ohio Electricity Rates: Most Offers Cost More Than Doing Nothing

Start with the number nobody selling you electricity will mention.

Research led by Ohio State University, reported by WOSU Public Media, looked at two million twelve month electricity offers posted on Ohio’s own marketplace between 2014 and 2024. More than 70 percent of them cost more than the default rate you get by doing nothing at all.

That does not mean switching is a bad idea. It means most offers are worse than your utility’s standard rate, and the work is in finding the ones that are not.

First: can you shop at all?

Ohio’s choice programme covers six utilities: AEP Ohio, AES Ohio, Duke Energy Ohio, Ohio Edison, The Illuminating Company and Toledo Edison.

If your electricity comes from a municipal utility or a rural co-op, you cannot shop, whatever a comparison site tells you. Look at the top of your bill. If the name is your city or a co-op, nobody can save you money by switching supplier, and the rest of this page does not apply.

You will see it claimed that every Ohioan can choose their supplier. That is not true.

Second: are you already in an aggregation?

Many Ohio cities and counties buy electricity in bulk for residents. NOPEC is the biggest. Here is how it works, in the words of Dynegy, one of the suppliers, answering a customer complaint to the Better Business Bureau:

In an electric aggregation, the City/County officials negotiates on behalf of its residents for a fixed rate to protect them from fluctuations in the market. Eligible residents are automatically included in this program unless they affirmatively opt out.

Read that last line again. You are in unless you opted out, and the opt-out arrives as a letter that is easy to mistake for junk mail.

Whether the aggregation rate is good or bad depends on the deal your city struck, and when. Sometimes it beats the utility. Sometimes it does not. The point is to know which one you are in, because you have three choices, not two.

Your choice	What it means
Stay in the aggregation	Simplest. Changes when the programme renegotiates, without you doing anything
Opt out to the utility default	The Standard Service Offer, the Price to Compare rate. Rarely the cheapest, never a disaster
Pick your own supplier	Can beat both. Given the 70 percent figure above, most offers will not

To decide you need four things off your own paperwork: your current rate, when the term ends, when the opt-out window is, and whether leaving costs anything. We walk through that decision in detail in should I opt out of NOPEC.

If you never want to be auto-enrolled again, you can ask the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to put you on its “Do Not Aggregate” list. That permanently excludes your account. Almost nobody mentions this.

What your utility charges today

Your utility	Where it serves	Price to Compare	Good until
The Illuminating Company	Cleveland and the surrounding area	11.16 cents	30 September 2026
Toledo Edison	Toledo and northwest Ohio	11.10 cents per kWh	30 September 2026
AEP Ohio	Columbus, southern and Appalachian Ohio	10.97 cents	30 September 2026
Ohio Edison	Northeast and north central Ohio	10.92 cents	30 September 2026
AES Ohio	Dayton and west central Ohio	10.86 cents	31 May 2027
Duke Energy Ohio	Cincinnati and the southwest	10.69 cents	30 September 2026

Rates from Energy Choice Ohio, the state’s own comparison site. Every figure in the table was read off that site on 15 September 2026.

Heat with electricity and on AES Ohio? Your rate drops to 9.18 cents on 1 November 2026. Five of these reset on 1 October 2026.

The thing that actually costs people money

It is not the headline rate. It is what happens when the fixed term ends. From a Better Business Bureau complaint against Energy Harbor:

Entered into 12 month contract with energy harbor April 15, 2025 for an energy supply rate of $.0899 and they changed my rate Jan. 2026 to $.12994 without notice.

That is a 44 percent rise on the supply rate, on a contract that had run its course. The supplier’s position is that renewal letters go out 30 to 60 days before expiry with the new rate and the opt-out deadline in them, and that this complies with the rules.

Both things are true at once. A reader on Reddit put it best:

If I did not respond to the letter, my rate would get jacked up to .18/kwh. When people say they get scammed by these companies I assume they are ignoring or have missed the end of contract communication from them.

So put your contract end date in your phone calendar the day you sign, with a reminder six weeks before. That one action prevents the most common expensive outcome in Ohio’s electricity market. There is more on it in what happens when your Ohio electricity contract ends.

The comparison almost everyone gets wrong

You will read everywhere that your delivery charges never change, so compare a supplier’s rate straight against the Price to Compare. That is nearly right, and in parts of Ohio it is wrong enough to matter.

Most delivery charges do stay with your utility. But which charges you avoid depends on your utility and its tariff. FirstEnergy, which is Ohio Edison, The Illuminating Company and Toledo Edison, says its own Price to Compare is worked out from the bypassable generation and transmission related component of your bill, divided by your monthly kWh.

So: most of your bill stays put, but the part that moves is specific to your utility and your rate class. Check your bill and the current tariff. Do not take a comparison site’s word for it, including ours.

And never compare a supplier’s rate against your total bill. A supplier quoting 9.9 cents against a Price to Compare of 10.97 saves a typical 850 kWh Ohio household about nine dollars a month. Worth having. Not the third of your bill that some pitches imply.

Cents are the wrong unit

Every comparison page ranks plans by advertised cents per kWh. That is not what you pay. What you pay over a year is the rate, plus any monthly charge, for the length of the term, then whatever it becomes afterwards. A plan at 9.4 cents with a five dollar monthly fee costs a typical household more over twelve months than a plan at 10.1 cents with no fee.

How switching actually works here

Your supplier must file the switch at least 12 days before your next meter reading. Miss that and it waits until the month after. Sign up on the 20th with a meter read on the 28th and you are waiting five weeks, not one.

• Your utility posts a confirmation letter.
• You have seven days from that letter to cancel, no reason needed.
• Your first switch is free. Later ones carry a five dollar fee charged to the supplier.
• Nothing physical happens. Nobody visits, the meter does not change, the power does not go off.

And if you cancel, give it time. One customer was told cancellation may take up to two billing cycles to take effect. That is normal. It has not failed.

Ohio has had a real problem with this

In February 2026 the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the state regulator’s ban on a supplier trading as Green Choice Energy. The case found forged sign-ups, altered recordings of the verification calls, faked caller ID, people pretending to be the utility, and false claims about gift cards and savings. The penalty, up to 1.44 million dollars, went back for recalculation.

Nobody from your utility will ever call or knock to sell you a cheaper supply rate. Your utility does not sell supply. If someone says they are from AEP or Duke and they want your account number, they are not. The red flags are set out in how Ohio electricity supplier scams work, and you can check any supplier against the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

Where to compare, today

Ohio runs its own comparison site, free, with every certified supplier on it. Apples to Apples, at energychoice.ohio.gov. Nobody pays it a referral fee. Most of the sites you will find searching for rates are paid by the suppliers they list, and they say so in their own small print.

We are not live in Ohio yet. We cover Texas today and Ohio is next. Use the state’s site meanwhile, and leave your email if you want to know the day we launch here.

Questions

I am in NOPEC. Am I being ripped off?

Not necessarily. Aggregation rates are sometimes better than the utility default and sometimes worse, and they change. Find your rate and its end date on your bill, then compare it against your utility’s Price to Compare above.

How do I stop being auto-enrolled in future?

Ask the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to add you to its “Do Not Aggregate” list.

Will my power go out during the switch?

No. Your utility still delivers the electricity.

Who do I call if the lights go off?

Your utility, always. Never your supplier.

I cancelled and the supplier is still billing me. Did it fail?

Probably not. Cancellation can take up to two billing cycles to show up.

I rent. Can I switch?

If the account is in your name, yes.

What if I am on the Percentage of Income Payment Plan?

PIPP customers should not shop for supply. Speak to your utility first.

Is the cheapest rate the best deal?

No. A one year fixed rate at 10.4 cents usually beats an introductory 8.9 cents that turns variable after three months.