New Illinois Laws: A Family of Four Earning $99,000 Can Now Get Help With Their Electric Bill

Two energy bills got signed in Chicago on July 9, and between them they answer the two questions I hear most on the phone: can I get help with this bill, and what am I even paying for?

Governor JB Pritzker signed House Bill 4456 and House Bill 5524 that day. Neither one cuts your rate. But one of them moved the income line for bill assistance up by a lot, and the other is going to put every fee on your electric bill into a public report with a dollar figure next to it.

Here's what actually changed, who it helps, and — now that the 2026-27 LIHEAP year is about to open — when to apply.

The income limit moved from 200% to 300% of poverty

HB 4456 is the one with money in it.

Illinois runs the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program — LIHEAP — with federal dollars, and it helps households pay heat and electric costs. Until July 9 you generally had to earn at or below 200% of the federal poverty level to qualify. The new law lets the state set that ceiling as high as 300%, and for the 2026-27 program year that's where Ameren Illinois and ComEd customers land.

LIHEAP looks at your gross household income over the 30 days before you apply, so the local agencies publish the limits as 30-day figures. Here they are, with the annual equivalent:

A family of four earning ninety-nine thousand dollars a year now qualifies for energy assistance in Illinois. Read that twice. I've had that very conversation with homeowners in Belleville and Decatur who assumed — reasonably — that assistance programs were meant for somebody else. That assumption is now out of date.

One wrinkle worth knowing: the 300% line applies to customers of the big regulated utilities — Ameren Illinois, ComEd, Nicor, North Shore and Peoples Gas. If you're on a co-op or municipal utility, your local agency uses a lower 60%-of-state-median-income table, so ask before you assume either way.

When you can actually apply

The law took effect July 9, but LIHEAP runs on a program year, and the 2025-26 year closed August 15. The 2026-27 year opens October 1, 2026 for households with someone 60 or older, someone with a disability, a child age 5 or under, or a disconnection notice in hand. Everyone else who's income-eligible can apply starting November 1, 2026. Applications run into next August or until the money's gone, and it's first come, first served — so October and November are the months, not February.

The part that's easy to miss: the discount underneath

LIHEAP is a grant. But qualifying for LIHEAP also plugs you into something separate, and to my mind more interesting: your utility's low-income discount program.

That program traces back to the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act in 2021. In 2023, the Illinois Commerce Commission ordered the state's largest gas, electric and water companies to offer discounted rates. It's a five-tier structure. The Governor's office describes those discounts as ranging from 5% to 84% of a customer's total monthly gas bill, and says low-income discount rates for electric and water are offered in 2026 as well; ComEd's electric discount started January 1. Which tier a household lands in depends on income, how many people live in the home, and what the utility charges to serve them.

Two details worth carrying around:

• LIHEAP-eligible households are enrolled in the discount automatically. There's no second application.
• You have to reapply for LIHEAP every year to keep it. Miss the annual application and the discount leaves with it.

HB 4456 also fixed something real. Before, the discount applied to certain charges. The new law lets the Commission approve a discount covering the whole electric or gas bill — delivery, supply and the rest. If you've ever received a "discount" that shaved four dollars off a $240 bill, you already understand why that sentence matters more than it looks.

Somebody funds that discount. It's everybody.

Here's the part the press release doesn't lead with.

The low-income discount isn't paid for by utility shareholders out of generosity. It's funded through a small charge on all customers' bills. Yours included, if you don't qualify.

Rep. CD Davidsmeyer of Jacksonville said so flatly during debate: "The reality is this is another rate increase on the people who are middle income and all the way up."

I don't read that as a reason to oppose the program. Rep. Laura Faver Dias of Grayslake made the counterpoint that in low-income communities, families are spending up to 20% of their income on utilities — and when a household can't pay and gets shut off, utilities go to the ICC to recover those costs from ratepayers anyway. The money comes out of the same pockets either way. This law just picks a predictable, capped way to do it.

That cap is the piece that matters for everyone who doesn't qualify: HB 4456 caps the surcharge rate funding the discount, which had been scheduled to increase again in 2027.

The second law: a receipt for your bill

HB 5524 is the transparency one, and it's an unusual bill for Illinois — a Republican measure, sponsored by Rep. Dave Severin of Benton in the House and Sen. Terri Bryant of Murphysboro in the Senate, that passed unanimously in both chambers.

What it does: it orders the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability to publish a report breaking down the charges on a residential customer's monthly electric bill. Not supply and delivery — the other stuff. For every charge, the report has to list:

• what the charge is
• which law or agency requires it
• what program or service it funds
• how much money it collected in 2025

That report gets posted on the ICC's website. The law takes effect January 1, 2027.

Severin was candid about the limits of his own bill. In his words: "So, does it lower someone's bill? No, it doesn't, but it makes it transparent, where it makes the energy companies accountable for what's going on."

He's right, and I'd add one thing. Most Illinois homeowners have never seen those line items explained in one place. Once there's a public document listing the 2025 dollar total collected next to each charge, arguing about which ones deserve to exist gets a lot easier. Severin has said he intends to pass the bill again each year, which would make it an annual scorecard rather than a one-time curiosity.

If you'd rather not wait until January, you can upload a recent bill and have our rate analyzer break the charges apart for you right now.

If you don't qualify — and most homeowners won't

A family of four at $99,000 is the ceiling. Plenty of the people who call me are a household of four at $115,000, with two car payments, a mortgage, and an Ameren bill that went from about $140 to about $260 in five years.

For that household, neither of these laws lowers anything. The transparency report will eventually tell you why your bill is what it is, which is worth something. It just isn't money.

What has genuinely moved for that household is the rate itself. Ameren's all-in summer rate is running near 20¢/kWh this year and ComEd's around 17–18¢, and Ameren's total rate is up roughly 94% over five years. Where the next increases come from is covered in our breakdown of the rate hikes CUB is fighting, and the structural reason downstate bills keep climbing in why your Ameren bill keeps going up. Current numbers live on our Ameren rates and ComEd rates pages.

The one variable a homeowner actually controls is how much electricity they buy from the utility at those prices.

Where solar fits — honestly

I sell solar for a living, so weigh this section accordingly. Here's the version I'd give my neighbor.

The federal tax credit for customer-owned residential systems ended at the close of 2025, and that made the cash-purchase math harder for a lot of Illinois homes. What still pencils out for most people is the lease: no upfront cost, and you buy your power as low as $0.10/kWh rather than the utility's roughly 17–20¢ all-in summer rate. Nobody sends you a check. You're buying electricity for less than the grid sells it, with a predictable rate schedule set in your contract before you sign.

That's the whole pitch. No promises, no windfall. Estimated savings depend on your roof, your usage and your utility, and I'll tell you when the numbers don't work — they don't always.

If you do qualify under the new 300% threshold, apply for LIHEAP the day your window opens. That's real money and it's yours. Solar can wait a month.

One thing not to confuse

The $99,000 figure belongs to LIHEAP — bill-payment assistance, measured against the federal poverty level.

Illinois Solar for All uses a completely different yardstick: 80% of area median income. Different program, different number, different application. A household can qualify for one and not the other, and I've watched people talk themselves out of both because they mixed the two up. If it's the solar-specific program you're after, start on our Solar for All page.

What to do this fall

1. If your household is at or under the 30-day figures above, put October 1 (priority households) or November 1 (everyone else) on the calendar and have your last 30 days of pay stubs and a recent bill ready.
2. If you already receive LIHEAP, the same dates apply — you have to reapply every year, and the utility discount rides on it.
3. Either way, pull out your last bill and look at the line items below supply and delivery. Come January there will finally be a public document explaining them.
4. If your bill is the problem and assistance isn't the answer, run your own numbers before somebody runs them for you.

Questions about any of it — the programs, the charges on your bill, or whether solar makes sense on your particular roof — call me at (618) 217-2001 or get in touch here. I'll tell you if the answer is no.