Why Pennsylvania Utilities Have a 17¢ Rate Spread (Same State, Opposite Directions)

If you live in Pennsylvania and you're on default supply — the rate your utility charges when you haven't shopped a competitive supplier — what you pay per kilowatt-hour depends almost entirely on which of six utilities owns the wires in your neighborhood.

Per NREL's U.S. Utility Rate Database, the current residential default supply rates filed with the Pennsylvania PUC (June 2026) sit at roughly:

That spread between the cheapest and most expensive defaults in the same state is wider than the average rate in many states. For a household using 1,000 kWh/month, the West Penn customer pays well over $100/month more on supply alone than the PPL Electric customer. Both on default supply, both inside the same PUC, both pulling power from the same PJM grid.

This post walks through the trajectories since 2015, ranks all six utilities, and explains why the same state produces such a wide split — and why state-average rate headlines hide what's actually happening to specific households.

URDB preserves every tariff revision back to about 2011. Looking at the residential default supply rate at year-end 2015 versus the current filings, this is the picture:

Two utilities — both FirstEnergy subsidiaries (Met-Ed and West Penn Power) — more than doubled. The other four FirstEnergy/non-FirstEnergy mix all fell, with PPL Electric dropping the residential default by almost 60%.

Pennsylvania's default supply is called Price to Compare (PTC). The PUC requires every utility to procure it through a mix of long-dated, mid-dated, and spot purchases — typically rolling auctions held every quarter, with multiple tranches per auction. The cleared prices feed into a weighted average that becomes the next quarter's PTC.

What this means in practice: every utility runs its own procurement schedule, hedges on its own calendar, signs its own load-following contracts, and gets a PTC that is mathematically a function of that utility's procurement history. Not the state's.

Three things drive the spread.

Procurement timing. Met-Ed and West Penn Power ran their auctions through the late-2022 and 2023 wholesale price spikes. Those high-cleared blocks are still rolling through their weighted averages. PPL Electric's procurement calendar caught more of the 2023–2024 wholesale slump.

Load shape. A utility's “average customer” doesn't use power the same way as another utility's average customer. Suppliers price load-following contracts based on the shape they're committing to serve. Met-Ed's heavily residential, weather-exposed territory is harder to serve than PPL's more diversified mix, so suppliers bid higher.

Hedge strategy. Each utility files an Energy Procurement Plan with the PUC. They aren't identical. PPL Electric's plan favors longer-dated procurement, which locked in lower forward prices before the 2022 wholesale spike. FirstEnergy's Pennsylvania utilities favor shorter-dated procurement, which exposes the PTC more directly to recent market prints.

None of this is controversial. It's in the public Energy Procurement Plan filings. It just explains why “Pennsylvania electric rates” isn't a coherent number.

Quick territorial map for the six big regulated utilities, ranked from cheapest to most expensive on current default supply:

1. PPL Electric — 12.95¢/kWh. Central and northeastern Pennsylvania including Allentown, Bethlehem, Lancaster, Harrisburg, Scranton, and Wilkes-Barre. About 1.5 million customers. Currently the lowest default in the state.

2. Penelec — 11.75¢/kWh. FirstEnergy subsidiary covering north-central and northwestern Pennsylvania, including Erie and the surrounding counties.

3. Duquesne Light — 13.75¢/kWh. Allegheny County and Pittsburgh proper. Compact, urban, the smallest territory of the six but high customer density.

4. PECO — 11.02¢/kWh. Philadelphia and the surrounding counties. About 1.7 million customers. Exelon-owned.

5. Met-Ed — 12.97¢/kWh. FirstEnergy subsidiary covering south-central and southeastern Pennsylvania, including Reading and York. About 565,000 customers.

6. West Penn Power — 10.95¢/kWh. FirstEnergy subsidiary covering southwestern Pennsylvania, the largest geographic footprint of any PA utility. About 720,000 customers in mostly rural and small-town territory.

If you don't know which one you're on, look at the top of your most recent bill. It's printed in two places.

Price to Compare is the per-kWh number you're paying for the supply (generation) portion of your bill if you haven't enrolled with a competitive supplier. It does not include:

When we say West Penn's default supply is 10.95¢ and PPL's is 12.95¢, that's comparing apples to apples — the same supply component of the bill. The distribution and rider pieces are also different between utilities, but the headline trajectory and the big spread is on supply.

The PUC's PA Power Switch site lists every certified competitive supplier offer, sortable by utility territory. If your current PTC is meaningfully higher than the lowest certified offer for your utility, switching is paperwork. If it's lower, you're already at the bottom — which on PPL Electric territory right now is the most common situation.

For a household on Met-Ed using 1,000 kWh/month, the supply portion alone runs roughly $181/month at the current PTC. The same household on PPL Electric pays around $50/month for the same supply. The delivery half of the bill is similar between the two. The supply half is what's eating the difference.

This is also why “switch your electricity supplier” campaigns hit different territories differently. On Met-Ed or West Penn territory, a competitive supplier offering 12¢/kWh on a 24-month fixed plan is a meaningful saving — and there are several in that price band right now. On PPL Electric territory, a competitive supplier offering 8¢/kWh isn't a saving at all; you'd be paying more than the default.

The right question isn't “should I switch?” The right question is “what's my current PTC, and is there a certified offer beneath it for a contract length I can live with?”

The next PUC procurement cycle for Met-Ed and West Penn Power will start blending in lower-cleared blocks if wholesale prices stay where they are. That doesn't mean those utilities will catch PPL anytime soon — it takes multiple quarters of cleared procurement to move the weighted average meaningfully. But the +130% trajectory isn't a permanent setting.

What matters for a household reading this today: the “state of Pennsylvania” doesn't have a default rate. Each of six utilities does, and the gap between them is the largest it's ever been on a percentage basis. The URDB tariff filings are the auditable source — every revision since 2011, with effective dates and approved-rate fields, indexed by NREL and traceable back to the original PUC tariff filing.

If you want to see your own utility's rate history, the per-utility rate pages on this site pull the same URDB filings underneath. Every number is sourced to a filed tariff.