The short answer
Ohio is fully deregulated for electricity statewide.
Ohio is fully deregulated for electricity statewide. The four investor-owned utilities — AEP Ohio, FirstEnergy (Ohio Edison, Cleveland Electric Illuminating, Toledo Edison), Duke Energy Ohio, and AES Ohio — own the wires and the meters; competitive suppliers compete on supply. PUCO's Apples-to-Apples portal is the official rate-comparison source. This guide walks through the supplier-choice rules, the SSO auction mechanics, and what changes for residential vs commercial customers.
Ohio's four investor-owned utilities and their territories
AEP Ohio covers central and southeastern Ohio (Columbus, Athens, Marietta) — about 1.5M customers. FirstEnergy operates as three legal-entity utilities (Ohio Edison, Cleveland Electric Illuminating, Toledo Edison) covering northern Ohio — Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, Youngstown.
Duke Energy Ohio covers the Cincinnati metro and southwestern Ohio. AES Ohio (formerly DP&L) covers the Dayton metro.
Each utility runs its own SSO auction and has its own delivery-side tariff. Supplier choice is statewide — any PUCO-licensed supplier can compete in any utility territory.
How the Standard Service Offer (SSO) works
When an Ohio customer does nothing, supply defaults to the utility's SSO rate. The SSO is set by an annual or semi-annual wholesale auction in which licensed suppliers bid for blocks of default-service load. The winning bids set the SSO rate for the next 12 months.
The SSO is structurally cheaper than the residential default rate in many states because of the auction mechanism. But it is still set conservatively to cover worst-case wholesale spikes, and competitive supplier offers consistently price under it for engaged customers.
PUCO's Apples-to-Apples portal shows the current SSO for each utility and a list of available competitive offers ranked by rate.
Infographic
Ohio bill split — supply (SSO or competitive) vs delivery
How PJM zone matters for Ohio supply offers
Ohio sits inside the PJM Interconnection grid. The wholesale electricity market that prices supplier offers is PJM. The capacity auction (which sets the delivery-side capacity charge) is also PJM. Wholesale futures and capacity-auction clearing prices have moved sharply in recent years, which flows through to both supply offers and delivery rates.
Ohio is split across two PJM zones: AEP zone (central/southeastern) and ATSI zone (FirstEnergy northern). Suppliers price offers slightly differently across the two zones based on basis differentials. A residential offer in Columbus may be 0.3¢/kWh different from the same supplier's offer in Cleveland.
Infographic
PJM capacity clearing prices — what is showing up on Ohio delivery bills
Recap
Bottom line
Ohio is one of the most active competitive electricity markets in the United States, with all four major investor-owned utilities (AEP Ohio, FirstEnergy, Duke, AES Ohio) participating in the deregulated supply market. The PUCO Apples-to-Apples portal is the official entry point for shopping; competitive supplier offers consistently price below the SSO benchmark for engaged customers.
For Ohio households due to lock or renew supply, the optimal play is shopping the Apples-to-Apples portal in the 60 to 90 days before the annual SSO reset (typically June 1), then locking a 12 to 24-month fixed-rate contract with no introductory period and no early-termination fee. The how-to-use-puco-apples-to-apples and capacity-charge-line-item-explained guides cover the supporting context.
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Sources
- Public Utility Commission of Ohio (PUCO)
- PA PowerSwitch — Pennsylvania PUC
- Power to Choose — Texas Public Utility Commission
- US Energy Information Administration (EIA.gov)
- Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
- PJM Markets — Capacity Auction (RPM)
- ERCOT Public Reports
- PUCO Energy Choice Ohio (Apples-to-Apples)