See if you're overpaying
for electricity.

Yes. Ohio deregulated electricity generation in 2001, and the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) certifies every competitive supplier before they can sell power in the state. Your utility — Ohio Edison, AEP Ohio, Duke Energy Ohio, AES Ohio, Toledo Edison, or The Illuminating Company — still delivers the electricity, reads your meter, sends the bill, and handles outages. Switching only changes who generates the electricity you use.

No. The physical electricity on your block doesn't change. Suppliers don't run separate wires; they buy power on the wholesale market and arrange for the utility to deliver it. If a storm knocks out a line, your local utility still restores power on the same schedule whether you're on the default rate or a competitive supplier.

The Price to Compare (PTC) is set by PUCO every two to three months based on the results of competitive auctions in which wholesale generators bid to serve default-service customers. It's a blended rate that includes capacity, energy, transmission losses, and a small administrative margin. Each of Ohio's six utility territories has its own PTC because the underlying auctions clear at different prices.

Most fixed-rate contracts auto-renew at the end of the term, usually onto a variable (month-to-month) rate that can spike well above the utility's PTC. Suppliers are required to send a renewal notice 45–60 days before the end of the term. If you do nothing, you don't lose power — you just end up paying the higher rate until you switch again or return to the utility's default service.

Yes, and there's no cancellation fee for going back to your utility's standard service. If your supplier contract has an early termination fee (ETF), you may owe that when leaving the contract early, but the utility itself won't charge anything to take you back. Switching back typically takes one to two billing cycles to take effect.

Functionally similar, but enrolled differently. With governmental aggregation (NOPEC is the largest in Ohio, covering hundreds of municipalities), your city or county negotiates a group rate with a supplier on behalf of all residents and auto-enrolls you unless you opt out. You can still individually shop suppliers in addition to or instead of the aggregation rate — sometimes you can do better, sometimes the group rate is the better deal.

Because FirstEnergy bills include extra bypassable line items beyond the Price to Compare. In Ohio Edison, CEI, and Toledo Edison territories, two additional riders (NMB and RER2) also drop off when you switch suppliers, adding roughly 2.7¢/kWh of additional savings on top of the PTC differential. AEP Ohio, Duke Energy Ohio, and AES Ohio recover similar costs through non-bypassable riders that you pay regardless of supplier choice.

Every morning. A scheduled job pulls the live Apples-to-Apples comparison page from energychoice.ohio.gov for all six utility territories and replaces the offer database. Rider rates are updated whenever PUCO approves new utility tariffs (typically once or twice a year). The Price to Compare values displayed here always match what's on PUCO's official site on the same day.