Cleveland business electricity: CPP and choice

Two distributors in one city, and the boundary that decides

Cleveland is unusual among the markets this site covers, because the city itself is split between two distribution systems. Cleveland Public Power, a division of the city's Department of Public Utilities, has served the city since 1906 and supplies roughly seventy-four thousand household, commercial and industrial accounts from a three-hundred-megawatt system the city describes as the largest municipally owned electric utility in Ohio. It takes power through four 138 kV interconnections and thirty-six substations, and its own material says its requirements are met through short and long term contracts with regional utilities and power suppliers, backed by combustion turbines and diesel units inside its own network. The rest of the city is The Illuminating Company's territory, FirstEnergy's Cleveland utility and the name on most business electric bills inside the city limits. The consequence for a buyer is direct: on the municipal side there is no retail supplier market to shop, because the city is the supplier; on the Illuminating Company side, Ohio's competitive retail market applies and a certified supplier can serve the account. Below the four 138 kV interconnections the system distributes at 69 kV, 13.8 kV, 11.5 kV or 2,300 volts depending on the substation, so a Cleveland Public Power account's delivery voltage is set by where it sits on the network rather than by the address alone.

• Cleveland Public Power is a municipal system: its accounts sit outside Ohio's competitive supplier market, so there is no supply contract to tender.
• The Illuminating Company is FirstEnergy's Cleveland utility, and an account there can be served by a PUCO-certified competitive supplier.
• The city's own aggregation information treats Cleveland Public Power accounts as ineligible, so a programme letter is itself a signal about which distributor serves the address.
• Have the distributor confirm service territory in writing before anyone prices a supply contract: a Cleveland mailing address proves nothing.
• CPP distributes at 69 kV, 13.8 kV, 11.5 kV or 2,300 volts by substation, so the delivery voltage is set by the network.

What the shopping decision is measured against in Ohio

Ohio has one benchmark that makes supplier offers comparable, and PUCO prints it on the shopping tools and on the bill. It is the Price to Compare, the default supply price for a customer who has not chosen a competitive supplier. For FirstEnergy Ohio's utilities, including The Illuminating Company, that default price is not set administratively. It comes out of the company's Standard Service Offer, bought competitively through a published bidding process under an electric security plan. The order PUCO entered in 2024 in Case No. 23-301-EL-SSO approved that plan for Ohio Edison, The Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company and Toledo Edison, and it eliminated thirty-six-month products from the auction, leaving twelve- and twenty-four-month tranches. That matters to a buyer for one reason: a benchmark built from shorter tranches reprices sooner, so a comparison carries a date. Two further points follow. The Price to Compare covers supply only, so it is not a delivered price. And comparing an offer against it is like-for-like only when the offer's term, product and volume assumptions line up.

• The Price to Compare is the utility's default supply price, not a quote for any business.
• FirstEnergy Ohio's default supply is bought through its published Standard Service Offer auctions.
• A published benchmark resets on the auction schedule, so any comparison has an expiry.
• Compare supply against supply: the benchmark excludes delivery, transmission riders and taxes.

The city's aggregation programme, and which accounts it reaches

Cleveland runs a Community Choice aggregation programme, developed with City Council and managed by the Sustainable Ohio Public Energy Council, for eligible household and small business accounts in The Illuminating Company's territory. The programme's electricity supplier is AEP Energy, which is not AEP Ohio, the Columbus-area distribution utility, a distinction worth keeping straight when invoices arrive bearing both names. Enrolment is opt-out rather than opt-in: eligible accounts get a programme letter once a year and stay enrolled unless they act, and the city states that a customer may leave at any time with no fee to join or leave. Ohio's statute requires the aggregator to disclose the rates, charges and terms in advance, and OAC 4901:1-21-17 requires written notice before an account is included. The eligible class settles most commercial enquiries: the programme is written for household and small business accounts, so a larger commercial account is buying on its own usage and outside it, shopping the market directly.

• Aggregation here is opt-out: eligible accounts are enrolled unless they answer the annual notice.
• Ohio law gives the enrolled customer a fresh opt-out every three years without a switching fee.
• The supplier is AEP Energy; the wires, meter, billing and outage response stay with The Illuminating Company.
• PUCO keeps a do-not-aggregate list under ORC 4928.21 for customers who never want to be enrolled.
• A demand-metered commercial account is normally outside the programme and shops on its own.

The city notice is what a commercial account acts on

Cleveland's programme is opt-out, which makes the annual notice the operative document rather than a courtesy. Under Ohio's opt-out disclosure rule at OAC 4901:1-21-17 the letter has to identify the supplier and the price or pricing formula, give an estimated service-commencement date and the period covered, explain how to opt out, and leave the opt-out window open at least twenty-one days from the postmark on the notice. Cleveland's programme, managed by the Sustainable Ohio Public Energy Council with AEP Energy as supplier, sends that letter to eligible household and small-business accounts in The Illuminating Company's territory and states plainly that there is no cost to enrol and no fee to leave. What a commercial account does with it turns on the class line. A demand-metered account is outside the eligible class, so the programme price is not something a larger site can assume it has. And a mercantile account does not arrive by default at all: under ORC 4928.20 and the same disclosure rule it is aggregated only by its own affirmative consent, and a mercantile account that finds itself enrolled in an opt-out programme is removed at the next opt-out opportunity unless it consents. The practical instruction is to confirm enrolment rather than infer it from the letter's arrival.

• The opt-out notice must name the supplier and the price or pricing formula, plus an estimated start date and the period covered.
• The opt-out window runs at least twenty-one days from the postmark on the notice — OAC 4901:1-21-17.
• Cleveland's programme states there is no cost to enrol and no fee to leave.
• A demand-metered commercial account sits outside the eligible class and cannot assume it is enrolled.
• A mercantile account joins only by affirmative consent and is removed at the next opt-out opportunity otherwise.

What stays behind after a supply contract

A supply contract in Cleveland changes one line on the bill. Distribution remains The Illuminating Company's business under a tariff PUCO approves, and the charges in that tariff, including any demand charge the account's rate schedule carries, do not move because a supplier was retained. Transmission is billed through the utility as well, at rates filed with FERC and applied inside PJM, so a Cleveland account pays it whether or not it shops. The utility also keeps the meter, the billing relationship, the restoration obligation and the service connection. A supplier takes on the commodity: energy, capacity and the wholesale costs bundled into supply. That is why the two most common Cleveland disappointments are arithmetic rather than commercial. One is a comparison that treated delivery as if it were in play. The other is a load profile that was never supplied, so the offer was priced on an assumption the meter will not support.

• Supply is the only line a competitive contract changes; delivery, transmission and riders stay with the utility.
• Demand charges live in the utility's tariff, so the lever is load shape, not negotiation.
• Interval data for the site is what turns a quoted assumption into a priced offer.
• The utility keeps the meter, the bill and the restoration obligation either way.

The delivery riders that stay after a supply switch

A Cleveland bill carries a second layer a supply contract never touches: the riders PUCO approves to recover specific delivery costs. FirstEnergy's Ohio companies filed theirs together in the Electric Security Plan V application in Case No. 23-301-EL-SSO, and the same filing that set up the standard-service auctions carried a set of cost-recovery mechanisms — a distribution capital recovery rider (Rider DCR), an energy-efficiency cost-recovery rider (Rider EEC), an advanced-metering and modern-grid rider (Rider AMI), a non-market-based services rider (Rider NMB) for the FERC and regional-transmission charges the companies pay, a storm cost-recovery rider (Rider SCR) and a vegetation-management cost-recovery rider (Rider VMC). The ordering does not matter to a buyer; three consequences do. These riders ride on the delivery half, so they persist whichever supplier bills the supply line and whether or not the account shops at all. They move on PUCO's litigation calendar rather than the customer's contract calendar, so a delivery expectation carried over from an old bill can simply be out of date. And they are the company's own recovery mechanism, which is why the next filing — ESP VI, docketed at Case No. 25-0092-EL-SSO — proposes to re-establish the storm and vegetation riders. Read the riders on the current bill, not the ones remembered from a signed contract.

• Delivery riders are approved separately from the supply price and survive a supply switch.
• The ESP V application (Case No. 23-301-EL-SSO) carried DCR, EEC, AMI, NMB, SCR and VMC recovery mechanisms.
• Rider NMB recovers non-market-based FERC and regional-transmission charges the companies pay.
• Riders change on PUCO's schedule, so a delivery expectation from an old bill can be wrong.
• ESP VI (Case No. 25-0092-EL-SSO) proposes to re-establish the storm and vegetation riders.

Northeast Ohio's load story, and where supply risk comes from

Cleveland sits in PJM's ATSI transmission zone, the FirstEnergy zone covering Ohio and Pennsylvania. It is one of the places PJM's own planning work identifies as absorbing large new load: the long-term forecast attributes part of the zone's rising peak demand to data centre additions, and the reliability analysis flags thermal and voltage violations inside the zone as that load connects, with effects that reach neighbouring utilities. None of that is a Cleveland-only story, but it changes what a Cleveland buyer should expect from a supply contract. Capacity, the payment for being available at the system peak, is set in PJM's regional auctions rather than by the utility, and it flows through the supply price. In a zone adding large, flat, round-the-clock load, capacity and transmission components are the parts of a Cleveland offer most likely to move, which is why a fixed product and an indexed product are not interchangeable decisions in this market.

• Cleveland is in PJM's ATSI zone; capacity and transmission costs come from the regional market.
• PJM's load forecast ties part of the zone's growth to large new loads, including data centres.
• A zone adding flat twenty-four-hour load can lift exactly the components a supplier passes through.
• That is the case for asking what a fixed price fixes, and what it merely assumes.

Gas at a Cleveland address runs on its own clock

The gas side of a Cleveland building belongs to a different company and a different rulebook. The distributor is The East Ohio Gas Company, doing business as Enbridge Gas Ohio, the utility Enbridge bought from Dominion Energy in 2024, the same company whose bills carried the name Dominion Energy Ohio. Its customer choice and transportation programmes are published as Energy Choice and Transport Service, and PUCO's Apples to Apples chooser is organised utility by utility, which makes it the quickest way to establish which distributor serves an address before reading a single offer. The structural difference between the two fuels decides a quote's timing. Electricity procurement is usually a twelve-month decision measured against a utility benchmark, while gas adds a winter dimension, a storage question and, above Ohio's mercantile threshold, a transportation arrangement rather than a commodity purchase.

• Cleveland gas is distributed by The East Ohio Gas Company, trading as Enbridge Gas Ohio, formerly Dominion Energy Ohio.
• Its programmes are Energy Choice and Transport Service; PUCO's chooser is organised by utility.
• Ohio's mercantile threshold changes the gas conversation from commodity to transportation.
• Gas and electricity contracts rarely expire together, which is why both dates belong in the same file.

What to gather before a Cleveland quote

One eligibility caveat applies to every energy page on this site, and it applies with particular force in a city that contains both cases inside one boundary: competitive supply depends on the service address, the meter and the utility territory, and municipal utilities, cooperatives and some jurisdictions have no competitive choice at all. HighGround may receive compensation from providers on completed purchases, and an enquiry places no order and switches no supplier: nothing moves until a contract is signed, and the supplier serving the account keeps serving it until a switch actually completes. What makes a Cleveland enquiry answerable is the file behind it, and one item in that file usually decides the outcome, because in Ohio the notice deadline moves faster than the procurement does.

• Twelve months of bills, with supply and delivery separated.
• The distributor, rate schedule, service class and meter type on the account.
• Interval data for any demand-metered site.
• Aggregation status, and whether the account has ever opted out.
• The notice date and expiry on any contract already running.
• Eligibility for competitive supply is decided by the address, the meter and the utility territory.
• HighGround may be compensated on completed purchases; an enquiry orders nothing and switches nothing.

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