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Is Homefield Energy Cheaper Than Ameren? 245 of 260 Illinois Town Power Deals Cost More Than the Utility Rate
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Is Homefield Energy Cheaper Than Ameren? 245 of 260 Illinois Town Power Deals Cost More Than the Utility Rate

Ryan Cook•

Probably not, and it's not close. As of September 15, 2026, the Illinois Commerce Commission's own list shows 260 municipal aggregation deals in Ameren Illinois territory with a current price, and 245 of them charge more than Ameren's price to compare of 11.326¢ per kWh (the summer rate, June 1 through September 30, 2026). Homefield Energy holds 188 of those 260 contracts. Only 15 towns beat the utility.

I sell solar across central and southern Illinois, so I look at a lot of Ameren bills at kitchen tables. A surprising number of those bills show a supplier the homeowner doesn't remember choosing. Usually they didn't. Their town chose it for them in a program called municipal aggregation, and most of them assume the town got a deal. The state's list says otherwise, and I'd rather you see the numbers than take my word for it.

The numbers, straight from the state's list

The Citizens Utility Board published an analysis of these deals on August 26 and found more than nine in ten Ameren-territory offers were money-losers. I pulled the same ICC list myself on September 15 and dropped every row whose posted term had already ended, so the figures below are the deals actually priced today.

What the ICC list shows (Sept 15, 2026) Ameren Illinois territory ComEd territory
Utility price to compare (June 1–Sept 30, 2026) 11.326¢/kWh 10.399¢/kWh
Aggregation deals with a current price 260 165
Deals priced above the utility 245 6 (another 10 sit at 10.40¢, a thousandth of a cent over)
Deals priced below the utility 15 81
Deals contractually matched to the utility price 0 68
Average markup on the deals that cost more ≈ 0.79¢/kWh ≈ 0.32¢/kWh (the 6)
Highest rate on the list 13.529¢ (Vermilion County) 10.90¢ (Lake Zurich, Riverside)
Lowest rate on the list 9.999¢ (Canton) 7.591¢ (West Brooklyn)
Dominant supplier Homefield Energy, 188 of 260 MC Squared Energy Services, 125 of 165
Most common term end May 31, 2027 (184 deals) Sept 30, 2027, Sept 30, 2028 and May 31, 2028 (19 each)

Two things jump out. First, the ComEd side mostly works. Sixty-eight northern Illinois towns wrote their contracts to track ComEd's price, and 81 more are priced under it. Second, the Ameren side is where the money leaks, and it leaks unevenly. Of the 245 deals above the utility, 121 are within half a cent, which barely matters. But 101 towns are at 12¢ or more, and 49 of them are at 13¢ or higher, which is close to two cents over Ameren for every kilowatt-hour.

Your town, if you're in my part of the state

Here's the current-term row for the places I actually drive to. Rates are cents per kWh from the ICC list; the "extra per month" column is my estimate at 1,000 kWh, which is a normal summer month for a family home around here.

Community Supplier Aggregation rate vs. Ameren 11.326¢ Est. extra at 1,000 kWh/mo Price runs through
Peoria, Peoria County, Washington, Morton, Peoria Heights, West Peoria Homefield Energy 13.29¢ +1.96¢ ≈ $20 June 30, 2027
Belleville Homefield Energy 13.09¢ +1.76¢ ≈ $18 May 31, 2027
Shiloh, Glen Carbon, Jerseyville Homefield Energy 13.09¢ +1.76¢ ≈ $18 June 30, 2027
Centralia Homefield Energy 13.09¢ +1.76¢ ≈ $18 June 30, 2027
Alton, East Alton, Wood River, Roxana, Hartford Homefield Energy 13.19¢ +1.86¢ ≈ $19 May–June 2027
Trenton Homefield Energy 13.49¢ +2.16¢ ≈ $22 May 31, 2027
Godfrey, Troy, Bethalto Homefield Energy 12.99¢ +1.66¢ ≈ $17 May–June 2027
Pekin, Champaign County, Mahomet Direct Energy 12.91¢ +1.58¢ ≈ $16 May 31, 2027
Urbana Direct Energy 12.88¢ +1.55¢ ≈ $16 May 31, 2027
Bloomington, Normal, Galesburg, Lincoln Direct Energy 12.76¢ +1.43¢ ≈ $14 Aug 31, 2027
Millstadt Homefield Energy 12.095¢ +0.77¢ ≈ $8 May 31, 2027
Swansea Constellation 11.997¢ +0.67¢ ≈ $7 May 31, 2027
Cahokia Heights Homefield Energy 11.99¢ +0.66¢ ≈ $7 May 31, 2027
Danville Constellation 11.695¢ +0.37¢ ≈ $4 May 31, 2027
Carbondale, Marion, Mt. Vernon, West Frankfort, Du Quoin, Murphysboro, Chester, Sparta, Nashville, Dupo Homefield Energy 11.378¢ +0.05¢ ≈ $0.50 May 31, 2027
Champaign Homefield Energy 10.899¢ −0.43¢ saves ≈ $4 May 1, 2027
Edwardsville Direct Energy 10.82¢ −0.51¢ saves ≈ $5 June 30, 2027
East St. Louis Homefield Energy 10.75¢ −0.58¢ saves ≈ $6 May 31, 2027
Quincy, Taylorville Homefield Energy 10.49¢ −0.84¢ saves ≈ $8 May 1, 2027
Canton Constellation 9.999¢ −1.33¢ saves ≈ $13 June 30, 2027

A few towns you might expect are missing on purpose. O'Fallon, Granite City, Maryville, Jacksonville and East Peoria show a posted term that ended in May or June 2026, so the list's price for them is stale; call your city hall for the renewed rate. Decatur's program expired in 2021, Effingham's, Mattoon's and Charleston's in December 2025, and Columbia's in June 2025. Springfield isn't on the list because CWLP is a city utility, not Ameren. Collinsville, Fairview Heights, Highland and Waterloo have no aggregation program listed at all.

Notice who's on the wrong end. Edwardsville, ten minutes from Glen Carbon, pays 10.82¢ while Glen Carbon pays 13.09¢. Same utility, same wires, same weather. The difference is entirely the contract the village signed and when it signed it.

Why a deal that was good in 2024 is bad in 2026

Nobody in these towns did anything dumb. The deals were mostly signed when Ameren's price to compare was higher than the aggregation rate, and a fixed 13.29¢ looked like protection. Then the utility's price moved. Ameren's supply price is set through state-run auctions and resets twice a year, and the summer 2026 price of 11.326¢ landed below what a lot of towns had locked in through mid-2027.

That's the structural problem with a fixed aggregation rate. Your town bets on a number for two or three years, and the utility gets to change its number every June and October. Sometimes the town wins that bet. This cycle, in Ameren territory, it mostly lost.

I'd also point out that CUB found closer to the opposite in September 2023, when 157 of the 293 active Ameren-territory offers (54%) were beating the utility price. Both reads were right for their moment. The lesson isn't "aggregation is a scam." It's that the deal has an expiration date and a comparison price, and you have to check both every year.

October 1 is when this gets more expensive

Here's the part that makes me want to publish this now rather than in the spring.

Ameren's 11.326¢ price expires September 30. A new non-summer price takes over October 1 and runs through May 2027. As of today the October figure hasn't been posted, so I can't tell you what it is. What I can tell you is that last cycle's non-summer Ameren price was 8.402¢ from October through December 2025 and 8.769¢ from January through May 2026, and the October reset came in below the summer price in each of the last two years. (It went the other way in 2022 and 2023, so this is a pattern, not a rule.)

If October lands anywhere near last winter's 8.769¢, a Peoria household locked at 13.29¢ until June 30, 2027 would be paying an estimated 4.5¢ more per kilowatt-hour than a neighbor on plain Ameren supply, all winter. On an 800 kWh January that's about $36 in one month. The September gap in the table above may be the smallest that gap will be until next summer.

Check the state's price-to-compare page the first week of October, then redo the subtraction for your town. It takes two minutes.

How to opt out

The supplier had to mail you an opt-out notice when the program started; sending that back is how you stay on Ameren from day one. If that window is long gone, you can still leave. CUB's August review says that if your aggregation rate costs more than the utility's supply price, you can opt out and return to default utility service without paying an exit fee. The ICC's own aggregation page says suppliers are prohibited from applying early termination fees or penalties to residential customers who go back to the utility, and the statute behind that (220 ILCS 5/16-119) has given residential customers the right to terminate a supplier contract at any time without termination fees or penalties since January 1, 2020. I walked through the switch-back steps and phone numbers in the alternative supplier post.

Expect one or two billing cycles before the change shows up, because it takes effect at a meter read. Nothing about delivery changes. Ameren still owns the wires, still reads the meter, and still takes the outage call, which is why the delivery half of your bill looks identical no matter whose name is on the supply line. If you're not sure how the supply and delivery halves fit together, the price-to-compare explainer lays it out with a real bill.

One honest caveat in the other direction: if your town is one of the 15 that beat Ameren, stay put through September 30, then look again in October. And if you're in a ComEd town on a "ComEd Match" contract, there's nothing to do; you're paying the utility price by design.

What this has to do with solar

I'll be straight about my angle. Every option above, aggregation or plain Ameren, still buys electricity at whatever the market sets that season. The town's contract just decides who sets it.

A solar lease is the one version of this where the rate schedule is written into your own contract for 25 years before you sign, at a rate as low as $0.10/kWh for the power the panels make. That's an estimate until someone has looked at your roof and your usage, and it only covers the supply half of the bill, not delivery. But it's the only path I know of where the October reset stops being your problem. If you want to see what that looks like for your house, the savings calculator runs the estimate for free, or you can read the current Ameren rate breakdown first.

Either way, pull your bill tonight and find the supply line. If it says Homefield Energy and you live in Peoria or Belleville, you now know what it's costing you.

Questions about your town's row, or want a second set of eyes on the bill? Call me at (618) 217-2001 or use the contact page. All savings figures on this page are estimates.

Sources

Frequently Asked Questions

In most towns, no. Homefield Energy supplies 188 of the 260 municipal aggregation deals in Ameren Illinois territory that carry a current price on the Illinois Commerce Commission's list as of September 15, 2026, and the large majority of those deals sit above Ameren's own price to compare of 11.326 cents per kilowatt-hour, which runs June 1 through September 30, 2026. The most common Homefield rate, 11.378 cents in 88 communities, is only about a twentieth of a cent higher. The Peoria-area deals are a different story at 13.29 cents, and the Metro East towns of Belleville, Shiloh and Glen Carbon are at 13.09 cents, roughly 1.8 to 2 cents above Ameren. On a 1,000 kilowatt-hour month that's an estimated $18 to $20 more for the same electricity through the same wires. Homefield is not the only supplier in these deals, and a few towns did beat Ameren, so check your own community's row before you decide anything.
Look at the supply section of your Ameren or ComEd bill first. If the supplier named there is Homefield Energy, Direct Energy, Constellation, MC Squared or Dynegy, and you never signed up with a salesperson, you're almost certainly in your town's aggregation program. Then go to the Illinois Commerce Commission's Plug In Illinois site, which keeps the official list of every municipal aggregation community with its supplier, its rate in cents per kilowatt-hour, the date the current price expires, and the utility territory. Compare that rate to the utility's price to compare on the same site, which is 11.326 cents for Ameren and 10.399 cents for ComEd through September 30, 2026. One caution: an asterisk on the list means the community's contract may run past the stated term and the price will change when it expires, so the number you see is only good for the current term. Your village hall can confirm the rest.
Yes. When your community picked a supplier, that supplier had to mail every resident an opt-out notice, and returning that form is the standard way to stay on utility supply from the start. If you missed the window or joined later, you can still leave. The Citizens Utility Board's August 2026 review says that if your aggregation rate costs more than the utility's supply price, you can opt out and return to default utility service without paying an exit fee, and Illinois law has given residential customers the right to leave a supplier contract at any time without termination fees since January 1, 2020. The switch takes effect at a meter read, so expect one or two billing cycles before Ameren or ComEd is your supplier again. Ameren still delivers the power, reads the meter and answers the outage line either way, because delivery was never part of the deal. Check the rate you'd be returning to first, since the utility's price resets on October 1.
Probably worse for most Ameren-territory towns, though the October number wasn't posted as of September 15, 2026. Ameren's price to compare runs in two seasons. The summer price of 11.326 cents covers June through September, and a separate price takes over October 1 and runs through May. Last cycle that non-summer price was 8.402 cents through December 2025 and 8.769 cents from January through May 2026, both well under the summer figure. Most aggregation deals in Ameren territory are locked at a single rate through May 31 or June 30, 2027, and 184 of them end on May 31, 2027. If October's utility price lands anywhere near last winter's, a town locked at 13.29 cents would be paying an estimated 4.5 cents more per kilowatt-hour. Watch the Plug In Illinois price-to-compare page the first week of October and do the subtraction for your own town. The gap you see in September may be the smallest it will be until next summer.

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