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Can I choose my electricity provider?

Updated

General information, not a substitute for the advice of an attorney.

Short answer: Sometimes. EIA says "some electric utility customers have the option to choose an alternate electricity supplier" where the industry has been restructured, a system called retail choice or customer choice (EIA FAQ 627). Whether you are one of them depends on your state and on what kind of utility serves your address.

How retail choice works

Under retail choice you buy the energy from a retail electricity marketer, which may be an affiliate of your distribution utility and may sell power from specific sources such as wind and other renewables (EIA FAQ 627). The wires do not change hands: "regardless of the electricity supplier, the distribution utility delivers the contracted electricity" and charges for delivery (EIA FAQ 627). That is why a bill in a choice state has separate supply and delivery charges.

Who is excluded

  • Retail choice is "available only for utility customers served by investor-owned utilities (IOUs)," with a few exceptions (EIA FAQ 627).
  • Only "a few electric cooperatives, municipal utilities, and government-operated utilities offer retail choice" (EIA FAQ 627). If a co-op or city utility serves you, assume you cannot switch unless it says otherwise.
  • Some states run community choice aggregation programs that customers can opt into or out of (EIA FAQ 627).

EIA's FAQ page did not list the choice states by name when we opened it, so we do not reproduce a state list here.

Texas

Texas is the one case EIA singles out: the state requires customers in the ERCOT grid area to choose a provider (EIA FAQ 627). The Public Utility Commission of Texas runs the official comparison site, Power to Choose, but we could not open it for this page, so check the current plan listings there directly. Parts of Texas outside ERCOT, and areas served by co-ops and municipal utilities inside it, generally do not have choice, consistent with the IOU limitation above (EIA FAQ 627).

What choosing changes and what it does not

Switching suppliers changes the supply price and contract terms. It does not change who restores power after an outage, which remains the distribution utility, and it does not change delivery charges, which EIA says the distribution utility bills regardless of supplier (EIA FAQ 627). For the price side of the decision, the 2025 U.S. average residential rate was 17.30 cents per kWh (EIA, prices and factors).

See what ERCOT is, outage history by county and ZIP, and rooftop solar and net metering by state.

General information from the sources linked above, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

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