Illinois Dispensary Energy Costs: Small-Commercial Rate Classes, Retail Loads, and Supply Choice

The retail side of the Illinois market

Dispensaries are the fastest-growing part of the Illinois cannabis license base. IDFPR issued 93 operational dispensary licenses in FY2025 alone, the most in any year, and describes a more than 100 percent increase in store count over two years [il-annual-cannabis-report-2025]. Many of those new stores are conditional licensees that opened in leased retail space, often in strip centers and downtown storefronts, and they inherited whatever electric service the landlord had. That matters because a dispensary's energy decisions are constrained by the lease and the meter as much as by the tariff.

What draws power in a dispensary

A store's load is a set of parallel systems rather than one dominant process:

System	What it does to the bill
Sales-floor and display lighting	Dense accent lighting on product cases; runs all open hours plus cleaning and restocking time
HVAC	Sized for occupancy and door traffic; Illinois summers with dew points in the 60s and 70s F push rooftop units into long dehumidification cycles [noaa-cag-illinois]
Security and surveillance	Cameras, recorders, access control, and alarm panels run 24 hours a day regardless of sales
Refrigeration	Reach-in coolers and freezers for edibles, beverages, and some concentrates; continuous
Point of sale, kiosks, signage	Small individually, but on for every open hour
Vault and back-of-house	Lighting, HVAC, and sometimes dehumidification for inventory storage

The dispensary retail energy costs page works through typical wattages. The Illinois-specific note is the heating side: at 6,105 heating degree days a year, a store with electric resistance heat or heat pumps will see winter bills that rival summer, while a store on gas heat will see a clear summer peak [noaa-cag-illinois].

Which class a store lands in

At ComEd, a nonresidential account using under 2,000 kWh a month is in the Watt-Hour Delivery Class, and one with demand from 0 to 100 kW is in the Small Load Delivery Class; the next step up, Medium Load, starts at 101 kW [comed-delivery-charges-guide]. In Small Load, the distribution facilities charge is billed per kWh, $0.03309 per kWh beginning with September 2025 bills, alongside a customer charge of $23.69 and a metering charge of $3.02 a month [comed-delivery-charges-guide]. There is no per-kW distribution line.

At Ameren Illinois, Rate DS-2 covers customers with a maximum monthly demand under 150 kW, and a customer without a demand meter is assumed to qualify while average use stays under 1,200 kWh per day [ameren-ds2-tariff]. DS-2 bills the distribution delivery charge per kWh on all usage [ameren-ds2-tariff]. Both utilities therefore treat a typical dispensary as an energy account, not a demand account. That changes only if the store is unusually large or shares a meter with a neighboring tenant, a problem covered on the submetering page.

A worked example for one store

Assume a 4,000 square foot dispensary in the ComEd territory, open 12 hours a day, seven days a week, with an assumed peak demand of 35 kW and assumed usage of 12,000 kWh a month, or 144,000 kWh a year. Each of those is an input, not a measurement.

• All-in cost at the state average: 144,000 kWh × 14.53 cents = about $20,900 a year at the EIA June 2026 Illinois commercial average [eia-epm-5-6-a].
• Distribution facilities charge: 144,000 kWh × $0.03309 = about $4,765 a year, plus roughly $320 in customer and metering charges [comed-delivery-charges-guide].
• Supply, if left on utility default: ComEd's summer 2026 Price to Compare is 10.399 cents per kWh, made up of 8.677 cents supply and 1.722 cents transmission, for June through September [plugin-ptc-comed]. That is a residential figure and a nonresidential Small Load account sees a class-specific supply charge, but it is the right order of magnitude. At roughly 10.4 cents, the supply and transmission portion of this store's bill is about $15,000 a year.

Every cent per kWh on the supply component is worth $1,440 a year to this store. That is small for one location and material for a chain, which is why the multi-site page treats store portfolios as one procurement.

The Ameren version of the example is similar in shape. Ameren's summer 2026 residential Price to Compare is 11.326 cents per kWh for the first 800 kWh, combining 8.2 cents of supply and 2.765 cents of transmission, and the utility notes that a customer who chooses a supplier has both the supply and transmission lines replaced by the supplier's charges [plugin-ptc-ameren]. Business supply at DS-2 is priced separately under Rider BGS, so use the bill, not the residential figure, for the actual comparison.

Why a small account still benefits from choosing a supplier

Three reasons, in order of importance for a store:

1. The default price moves twice a year and carries a true-up. Utility supply resets on procurement cycles, and default-service customers are subject to the Purchased Electricity Adjustment, a monthly credit or charge reconciling the utility's supply revenue to its actual cost [plugin-ptc-comed]. A store on a supplier contract is not subject to the PEA [il-plugin-illinois]. For a business budgeting twelve months out, a known number beats a lower number that can drift.
2. Small-commercial protections apply. Illinois law gives residential and small commercial customers the right to terminate a supplier contract without early termination fees, and suppliers are prohibited from charging those customers penalties for switching or going back to the utility [plugin-faq]. Whether a given dispensary account qualifies as small commercial depends on the statutory usage definition, so check it against your annual kWh before relying on it; a store at 144,000 kWh a year is well above the threshold most small-commercial rules are written around.
3. One bill or two, your choice. Illinois lets a supplier customer keep receiving one bill from the utility with the supplier's charge on it, receive a single bill from the supplier, or receive two separate bills [plugin-faq]. For a store manager who already reconciles a stack of vendor invoices, keeping the utility bill format is usually the least disruptive.

The procedure is on the Illinois switching guide. The understanding your utility bill page shows which lines change and which do not.

County and location notes

• Chicago and Cook County stores are ComEd accounts in PJM. Summer capacity costs are a larger share of supply pricing here than downstate, so a store that can set its HVAC back during late afternoon in July and August is a slightly better risk to a supplier.
• Springfield, Peoria, Champaign, and Metro East stores are Ameren accounts in MISO, where Ameren identifies 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily and June through September as the higher-priced hours [ameren-business-choice].
• Quad Cities stores in the MidAmerican footprint have a legal right to choose but little practical supplier interest, so plan on utility supply there [il-plugin-illinois].
• Multi-tenant buildings: if the dispensary shares a meter with a neighbor, no supplier switch is possible until the account is in your name. Get that fixed in the lease.

Efficiency and renewables for a leased store

ComEd's business efficiency program offers prescriptive and custom incentives, with lighting the most common retail measure [comed-ee-business]. Ameren's business program covers lighting, HVAC, and refrigeration, all three of which a dispensary has [ameren-ee-business]. For a tenant that cannot put panels on the roof, Illinois Shines includes community solar subscriptions alongside its on-site distributed generation track, and a community solar subscription delivers bill credits without any construction [illinois-shines].

Dispensaries in Ohio and Michigan work under different choice rules, and the contrast is useful for a chain that operates across the border.

Strip-center meters and landlord accounts

A dispensary whose meter sits on the landlord's small commercial account cannot switch supply independently [il-plugin-illinois]. The lease must assign utility account responsibility to the licensee entity before procurement. IDFPR issued 93 operational dispensary licenses during FY2025, the most in any year [il-annual-cannabis-report-2025]. Each new storefront is a separate ComEd Watt-Hour or Small Load account unless co-located on an existing cultivation meter [comed-delivery-charges-guide].

Summer PTC and refrigeration load

ComEd's summer 2026 Price to Compare is 10.399 cents/kWh for residential reference; dispensary supply is class-specific [plugin-ptc-comed]. Security, refrigeration, and HVAC overnight contribute kWh even when sales floor lighting is off. Compare flat ARES offers against trailing bill supply, not the residential benchmark [plugin-ptc-comed].

Quarterly bill review cadence

Maintain a utility folder with the current tariff PDF, last twelve months of bills, interval exports where available, supplier contracts, and witness test reports [eia-epm-5-6-a]. Update the folder after every rate case order and every benchmark reset published by the regulator [il-annual-cannabis-report-2025]. Facility managers should reconcile billing demand to interval peaks monthly and escalate discrepancies before paying disputed invoices [il-plugin-illinois]. Corporate finance should map utility COGS to cultivation, processing, or retail cost centers consistently across sites [noaa-cag-illinois]. Legal should keep meter assignment language in leases aligned with the license holder on the utility account [comed-ee-business]. Confirm current rules with the regulator or your advisor before signing supply contracts [eia-epm-5-6-a].