How to Save Money on Your ComEd Bill

Does it seem like many expenses we pay each month are hard to lower? Why is it that no matter how hard we try we tend to repeat the same pattern of use and thus more or less repeat the same bill as the previous months? Is it more or less out of your control?

Take for instance, the phone bill. At the end of the month, we pay just about what we paid 30 days ago. Unless we have stickers, we pay for the refuse containers at a predetermined rate. The lawn service bill is the same each week.  It is the same with the newspaper delivery. Are we locked in without recourse?

Surprisingly, there are variables in our lives. We can water the lawn less, take quicker showers, install a loop in the hot water line, and use water more sparingly. We can also increase deductibles on our home and auto insurance policies, turn off lights when not in a room, and run the whole house colder in the winter and warmer in the summer. Collectively, will all of small actions make a big difference in our monthly outlay or is something missing that will remarkably save us fistfuls of dollars?

ComEd (an Exelon Company) has a program that too few know about, which allows you to be billed for the electricity you consume based on the wholesale hourly market prices. The Residential Real-Time Pricing (RRTP) program has had a goal of enrolling 110,000 customers—a goal that it has not hit. Are you enrolled? This is something that most of us in La Grange, La Grange Park and the western suburbs are missing out on. (I signed up just last month.)

Each enrollee in the RRTP program has to agree to be in the program for no less than 12 months and also has to agree to pay an additional $2.25 per month for the installation and use of a specific electricity meter that is capable of maintaining data on the homes hourly usage. (This is in addition to your standard month metering charge.)

Why must you and I have such a specific meter to read our units of electricity consumption?  Simply stated, when you use power is even more important than how much power you use in a specific 60-minute timeframe.

For example, most households use a washer and dryer. Some households wash and dry clothes on a daily basis while others wash clothes once a week. If homeowners are educated that power is much cheaper during specific times, a shift in use will occur. That shift in usage has a material effect on the generating capacity of ComEd.

Hourly pricing is the key to shifting usage. By being notified that power is “cheaper” at specific times or on one day over another, the consumer can make an educated decision on when to run appliances or consume power. Those decisions will end up at the end of the month in a lower electric bill.

To further reduce the cost of electricity use, participants can sign up to have their central air conditioning units automatically cycled to periods of “off and on” during high priced summer days.  After two hours of being automatically turned off, the unit would be turned back on. 

The RRTTP program is legislatively mandated. It was approved by the Illinois Commerce Commission in 2006. It was created to change your electricity usage habits so that you would take advantage of lower-priced hours and avoid heavy usage during those hours when power production costs were much higher.

If you are interested in signing up, go to www.thewattspot.com or call ComEd at 1-877-928-8776. And, for more information about the RRTP program, read this section on ComEd.com. 

By saving on your energy bill by rearranging how you use power, you might have enough money to buy the kids a few new bicycles, take a vacation, or have those dollars you need to kick-start your IRA contributions. Call ComEd today. Hopefully by May you will be able to say that your electricity-generating footprint is getting smaller as your wallet is getting fatter.