AmerenCILCO Backslide in Residential Shopping Ends, Growth Likely Reflects Aggregation

After two months of seeing losses in the number of residential electric customers on competitive supply, Ameren Rate Zone II (CILCO) saw growth in residential shopping from December 31, 2012 to January 31, 2013, according to a snapshot of residential migration statistics posted by the Illinois Commerce Commission.

The Plug-In Illinois site has been updated with the number of residential accounts migrated to (and billed on) competitive supply as of January 31, 2013.

During December, Ameren Rate Zone II saw a net loss of 716 residential electric customers on competitive supply, which had followed a November loss of 856 residential electric customers on competitive supply.

However, from December 31, 2012 to January 31, 2013, Ameren Rate Zone II saw the number of residential customers on competitive supply increase by 7,500.

Ameren Rate Zone I saw residential shopping increase by 5,700 accounts during January (versus growth of 2,000 accounts in December), and Ameren Rate Zone III saw residential shopping increase by 11,700 accounts during January (versus growth of 2,000 accounts in December).

The January growth likely reflects the impact of aggregation, as due to the enrollment timeline, plus the lag in the Illinois stats which only show accounts as switched after completing the first shopped billing cycle (versus customers switched at a meter read but not yet billed), the January stats are the earliest aggregations approved and executed in response to the November ballot would show up in the stats.

At ComEd, 1.433 million residential customers had switched and completed at least one billing cycle on competitive supply as of January 1, 2013.

That's growth of 32,000 accounts versus December 31, 2012. The December growth had been 100,000 accounts.

ComEd has already reported that total residential migration (including customers not yet billed on competitive supply) exceeded 1.5 million as of late October, and nearly 1 million more customers could be enrolled on competitive supply at ComEd under the Chicago opt-out aggregation.