Illinois Cannabis Extraction and Processing Energy: Chillers, Ovens, and the 100 kW and 150 kW Lines

Where extraction happens in the Illinois license structure

Illinois licenses infusers separately, with 55 infuser licenses on the books at the FY2025 report, alongside 21 cultivation centers and 87 craft growers [il-annual-cannabis-report-2025]. Extraction itself is spread across all three. A cultivation center often runs a lab inside a much larger grow, in which case the lab's demand disappears into a Very Large Load or DS-4 bill. A standalone infuser or a craft grower with a small extraction room is a different animal: a facility with a peak somewhere between 50 and 300 kW, where a single threshold decides the shape of the delivery bill. This page is about that second case.

What the process loads look like

An extraction lab's electric load is a stack of equipment that cycles on different schedules:

• Chillers and recirculating coolers for hydrocarbon and ethanol systems. These are the largest motor loads and they run hardest during a run and during solvent recovery.
• Vacuum ovens and decarboxylation ovens. Resistive heating, high wattage, typically on for hours at a time after a run.
• Rotary evaporators, falling film evaporators, and solvent recovery. Heating and cooling at the same time, often for the longest stretch of the day.
• C1D1 or C1D2 ventilation. Continuous exhaust and makeup air for the hazardous location, plus heating of that makeup air for much of an Illinois year, given 6,105 heating degree days [noaa-cag-illinois].
• Post-processing: centrifuges, filling and packaging lines, refrigeration for biomass and finished product, lighting, and office load.

The extraction facility loads page covers the equipment in detail. What matters here is coincidence. If the chiller, both ovens, and the evaporator all run at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, the meter records a half-hour peak that is the sum of all of them. If the ovens run overnight after the chiller shuts down, the peak is smaller. Illinois utilities bill the peak, not the sum.

The two lines that decide the bill

Utility	Below the line	Above the line
ComEd	Small Load Delivery Class, 0 to 100 kW; distribution facilities charge billed per kWh, $0.03309 per kWh beginning with September 2025 bills [comed-delivery-charges-guide]	Medium Load Delivery Class, 101 to 400 kW; distribution facilities charge billed per kW, $14.59 per kW at secondary voltage beginning with September 2025 bills, plus a higher customer and metering charge [comed-delivery-charges-guide]
Ameren Illinois	Rate DS-2, maximum monthly demand under 150 kW; distribution delivery charge per kWh; utility supply under Rider BGS or RTP [ameren-ds2-tariff]	Rate DS-3, 150 kW up to 1,000 kW; distribution delivery charge per kW of billing demand; utility supply under Rider HSS, hourly [ameren-ds3-tariff]

The ComEd figures above come from the utility's guide to billed delivery charges and change year to year under the CEJA plan; the Ameren per-kW rate sits in the Rate PBR-R appendix and is not reproduced here. The structural point does not change: below the line, delivery cost scales with energy; above it, delivery cost scales with the worst half-hour of the month.

Ameren also polices the line with a reassignment rule. A DS-2 customer with a maximum monthly demand of 150 kW or more in two or more of the 12 monthly billing periods of the prior calendar year is moved to DS-3 with the next June billing period, and cannot go back to DS-2 for at least 12 monthly billing periods after that [ameren-ds2-tariff]. A DS-2 customer without a demand meter is assumed to be under 150 kW while average use stays below 1,200 kWh per day [ameren-ds2-tariff]. The rate classes page explains how these assignment mechanics work in general.

A worked example: a 140 kW lab in Ameren territory

Assume a standalone infuser in Champaign with these assumed nameplate loads: two chillers totaling 60 kW, vacuum and decarb ovens totaling 30 kW, evaporator and solvent recovery at 25 kW, C1D1 ventilation and makeup air heating at 20 kW, and 25 kW of refrigeration, lighting, packaging, and office. That sums to 160 kW if everything runs at once.

Assume the lab operates five days a week and averages a 55 percent load factor against a 140 kW managed peak, meaning the operator staggers ovens after the chillers finish. Annual energy is then roughly 140 kW × 0.55 × 8,760 hours = 674,500 kWh. At the EIA June 2026 Illinois commercial average of 14.53 cents per kWh, the all-in bill is about $98,000 a year [eia-epm-5-6-a].

Now the same lab with no scheduling discipline. Peak hits 160 kW in July and again in August. Under the DS-2 reassignment rule, two months at or above 150 kW in the calendar year moves the account to DS-3 the following June, for at least 12 billing periods [ameren-ds2-tariff]. Once on DS-3:

• Delivery moves from a per-kWh charge to a per-kW charge on billing demand, where billing demand is the higher of the on-peak maximum or 50 percent of the off-peak maximum [ameren-ds3-tariff].
• Utility default supply moves from Rider BGS, a fixed price set through Illinois Power Agency procurement, to Rider HSS, an hourly price built on the MISO day-ahead locational marginal price with real-time settlement of any difference, plus a capacity charge based on the customer's planning-load contribution [ameren-rider-hss] [ameren-business-choice].

Whether DS-3 is cheaper or more expensive than DS-2 for a given lab depends on load factor. A flat, high-load-factor lab can come out ahead on per-kW delivery. A lab that peaks for two hours and idles the rest of the day does not. The point is that the change is not chosen; it is triggered by two half-hours in two different months.

Scheduling process loads around Illinois peaks

Ameren describes market prices as generally highest between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. daily and during June through September [ameren-business-choice]. ComEd sits in PJM, where summer weekday afternoons carry the highest energy and capacity costs [il-plugin-illinois]. For a lab, that suggests a simple sequence:

1. Run chillers and active extraction during the day, when staff are present and safety supervision is required.
2. Push ovens, decarb, and solvent recovery into the evening and overnight, when they need less attention and wholesale prices are lower.
3. Keep summer weekday afternoons as light as the production schedule allows. In PJM territory this also lowers the peak-load contribution that sets next year's capacity charge in a supplier contract.
4. Pull interval data monthly and look at the top ten half-hours. If they are all the same hour of the day, that is the hour to move something.

The peak demand vs. peak usage page shows why a small change in schedule can move demand more than a large change in equipment.

How a flatter load prices out with a supplier

A supplier quoting a fixed price in Illinois is pricing energy, capacity, transmission losses, and risk. A lab with a 55 percent load factor and a summer-light schedule is a better risk than a lab with a 30 percent load factor and summer afternoon peaks, and the fixed price reflects that. Two practical consequences:

• Below 100 kW at ComEd or 150 kW at Ameren, the lab is a small-commercial account from the supplier's point of view. Offers are simpler, often fixed per-kWh with capacity bundled, and the utility's Purchased Electricity Adjustment no longer applies once you are on a supplier contract [il-plugin-illinois].
• Above the line, suppliers will usually ask for interval data and will price capacity as a pass-through or bundled at a premium. This is where a block-and-index contract can fit an extraction schedule: buy a fixed block for the ventilation and refrigeration floor, and float the process peaks on the index at the hours you have chosen to run them.

Extraction labs in Michigan and Pennsylvania face different thresholds and different ISO exposure; the Michigan extraction page and the Pennsylvania extraction page show the contrast. Within Illinois, the ComEd page and the Ameren page cover each utility's billing and metering rules in more depth.

Efficiency incentives for process equipment

Ameren's business efficiency program includes custom incentives for process improvements alongside standard incentives for lighting, HVAC, and refrigeration [ameren-ee-business]. Chiller replacements, variable-speed drives on pumps and exhaust fans, and heat recovery on ovens are the kinds of projects a custom track is built for, and each one lowers peak kW as well as kWh. Confirm the current measure list and pre-approval requirements with the program before ordering equipment; both Illinois utility programs revise them on a portfolio cycle.

Infuser licenses and batch-load peaks

Illinois reported 55 infuser licenses alongside 108 cultivation licenses in the FY2025 annual report [il-annual-cannabis-report-2025]. Chillers, ovens, and solvent recovery spike demand on top of flat cultivation load when both share a meter. If processing needs a separate meter for fire code, enroll ARES supply on both accounts before energization [il-plugin-illinois]. ComEd in PJM and Ameren in MISO price capacity differently; dual-utility MSOs need separate pass-through language [il-plugin-illinois].

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 [ameren-ee-business]. Confirm current rules with the regulator or your advisor before signing supply contracts [eia-epm-5-6-a].