Rochester business energy: RG&E and Zone B

Two kinds of utility territory inside one metro area

Rochester is served by an investor-owned utility for most addresses and by village-owned systems for a handful, and the difference is not one of degree. Rochester Gas and Electric delivers to the city and the surrounding area. Against that, the American Public Power Association's list of public power systems in New York includes village electric departments inside and around this metro area - Fairport, Spencerport, Churchville, Holley and Bergen among them - and the Village of Fairport lists Fairport Electric as one of its own village departments. A village-owned system is public power: the village owns the utility, it buys its power wholesale, and it is not a utility whose customers a competitive supplier can enrol. New York's retail access process runs through the investor-owned utilities' tariffs, so an address inside a village system sits on one tariff with no supply line to shop. That is a fact worth establishing once per address before any comparison work is commissioned, because no amount of usage data makes a municipal address shoppable.

• Rochester Gas and Electric delivers electricity to the city and the surrounding area.
• APPA's New York public power list includes village-owned systems in and around the metro: Fairport, Spencerport, Churchville, Holley and Bergen among them.
• The Village of Fairport lists Fairport Electric among its village departments.
• A village-owned system buys wholesale and is not a utility energy service companies enrol through; there is no supplier to switch to.
• Read the utility name off the bill before assuming a competitive offer is available at all.

Zone B: what the Genesee zone does to a Rochester supply contract

NYISO's public load reference carries an RG&E Genesee subzone inside the Genesee load zone, and the state's eleven load zones run from A, West, to K, Long Island. The Public Service Commission's own exhibit describing the New York control area names B as Genesee and explains where the zones came from: they were drawn primarily from the topology of the transmission system and secondarily from the franchise areas of the investor-owned utilities. That is the fact a supplier prices against. A competitive offer is built from a forward energy component and a capacity component, and in New York neither is a single statewide number. Capacity is set zone by zone in the state's capacity market, and locational energy prices clear zone by zone because constraints between zones carry a cost. The exhibit draws the practical consequence for buyers north and west of the Hudson: zones A through E price relatively homogeneously as one West New York super zone, while the eastern zones do not. So a Rochester offer is not transferable to a Buffalo or a New York City address even when consumption is identical, and the only useful comparison for a Rochester account is another Rochester offer, or the utility's own supply. The same exhibit explains why the western zones behave as a group. Western New York's generation mix, it notes, holds much larger proportions of hydro, nuclear and coal than the downstate fleet, which the Commission describes as still highly dependent on an ageing set of combustion and gas turbines. That mix produces a persistent flow of value from west to east - the exhibit calls it economic transfer - because cheap western generation is priced into a market whose eastern zones clear higher. For a Rochester buyer the reading is practical rather than academic: the account's zone has its own cost basis, and it does not move when a New York City or Long Island account signs at a different level.

What a Rochester account actually switches

Retail access in New York changes the supplier named on the supply portion of the bill and nothing else. RG&E continues to own and operate the wires, read the meter, restore service after a storm, and issue the bill; the delivery charges printed on that bill are the utility's filed tariff and are not part of any supplier's offer. What changes is the supply line, which is what a competitive supplier prices, and the supplier has to be authorised and enrolled through the utility's retail access process before an offer can be delivered to the account. Most arrangements keep a single bill coming from the utility, so the way to tell whether a switch actually happened is the supplier name on the supply detail rather than a change in who sends the invoice. An account that has ever been enrolled in an aggregation adds one more step to the check: when a programme contract ends, the account returns to the utility's standard supply service and stays there until something else is signed, so the current supply arrangement is worth confirming in writing rather than assumed from memory.

• Retail access changes the supply line only; delivery, metering, outage response and billing stay with RG&E.
• The supplier must be authorised and enrolled in the utility's territory before an offer can be delivered.
• One bill continues to come from the utility under most arrangements; the supplier name on the supply detail is the evidence.
• An account whose aggregation contract has ended is back on the utility's standard supply service until something else is signed.

The city's aggregation programme, and why it ended

Rochester ran the largest aggregation experiment in the region. Rochester Community Power launched in September 2021, using the City of Rochester's collective purchasing power to buy supply for participating accounts, and the city's own account of the programme records participants consuming more than 562 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy between September 2021 and March 2025, avoiding more than 73,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. It was administered by Joule Assets and worked the way New York aggregation works: the utility still delivered the power and still sent the bill, and only the supply came from the programme. In 2025 the city announced it would not renew the supply contract, citing a lack of competitive pricing, and the programme ended with the December 2025 meter read. Every enrolled account returned automatically to RG&E's standard utility supply service, with RG&E sending the confirming notice. That is the useful lesson for a commercial account: aggregation is a procurement method rather than a discount, worth joining only when the competitive process produces an offer that beats the alternative on the terms the account actually uses. The city also warned that door-to-door sellers had claimed an association with the programme, which does not cold-call - a reminder to verify who is contacting the account before sharing a bill. The state framework the programme operated under is Case 14-M-0224, where the Commission authorised opt-out aggregation in its Order Authorizing Framework for Community Choice Aggregation Opt-Out Program of 21 April 2016, amended by the Order Modifying Community Choice Aggregation Programs and Establishing Further Process of 19 January 2023. Two features of that framework decide whether a programme reaches an account. The first is who can start one: the framework is addressed to municipalities, which file an implementation plan themselves or through a CCA administrator they select, so the unit of participation is the city, town or village. The second is how enrolment happens without a signature. Under the Commission's Uniform Business Practices an ESCO may not request customer data or enrol a customer without that customer's individual authorisation, so opt-out enrolment exists only where the Commission has granted it, and the aggregation is built around residential and small-commercial accounts. A larger commercial account therefore sits outside automatic enrolment and buys its own supply, which is why it usually gets more from its own contract than from a programme it was never part of.

Where the gas side sits

Electricity and gas at the same address are separate arrangements, and the gas side usually belongs to a distribution company that files its own tariff with the Public Service Commission. New York gas choice is a transportation arrangement rather than a supply switch: a marketer supplies the commodity into the utility's system, the utility moves it to the meter, and the bill still arrives from the utility with delivery charges no supplier controls. For a commercial account the decision usually turns on the shape of the winter, because space heating drives the load and a fixed arrangement buys certainty across the season whose consumption dwarfs the summer's. The arithmetic belongs on the account's own history: take the last two winters' monthly consumption, divide the coldest month by the lowest summer month, and the ratio shows how exposed the account is to a cold-weather price move. Whether transportation service is available at all depends on the account's annual volume and class, and that is checked per meter, which is why the same building can have electricity choice and no gas choice. Where no choice exists, the work moves to the demand and load-shape side of the bill instead.

• Electricity and gas are separate arrangements with separate eligibility, even at one address.
• New York gas choice is a transportation arrangement: the marketer supplies, the utility delivers and bills.
• Compute your own winter-to-summer consumption ratio from two winters of bills before judging winter exposure.
• Transportation eligibility is checked per meter against the account's annual volume and class.
• Where no choice exists, the remaining work is on demand and load shape.

What to assemble before a Rochester energy quote

The file starts with the utility name at the address, because it decides whether a competitive offer is possible at all. Read the rate schedule and the delivery charges straight off the bill as printed, and record the account and meter numbers and the supply arrangement currently in force. From the account's history, take twelve months of consumption by month with the maximum demand reading for each month: for electricity, kilowatt-hours plus peak demand is what a supplier prices, and for gas it is the quantity in the unit the bill uses. From the agreement, take the end date and the notice period, reading them from the contract rather than from the first invoice. Then check the two things that catch Rochester accounts out. First, whether the address sits inside a village-owned system, because that removes the supply question entirely. Second, whether the account has ever been enrolled in an aggregation, because a returned account is on the utility's default supply until something else is signed. Competitive supply depends on the service address, the meter and the utility territory that serves it; municipal utilities, cooperatives and some jurisdictions have no choice at all. HighGround works as an advisor-assisted channel rather than a rate table, sourcing electricity and natural gas supply through the Broker Online Exchange supplier network. HighGround may receive provider compensation on completed purchases, and an inquiry places no order and switches no supplier.

• Read the utility name at the address first; it decides whether an offer is possible.
• From the bill: rate schedule, delivery charges, account and meter numbers, current supply arrangement.
• Twelve months of consumption by month, each with its own peak demand reading; an annual total is not enough to price an account.
• From the agreement: end date and notice period, taken from the contract rather than the invoice.
• Check whether the address is inside a village-owned system and whether an aggregation contract has ended.
• Competitive supply depends on the service address, the meter and the utility territory; municipal utilities, cooperatives and some jurisdictions have no choice at all.

PUT THE OPTIONS SIDE BY SIDE

Your comparison checklist

Common questions