Indiana’s electric system is built on a simple principle: utilities must serve everyone. In return for defined service territories, they provide reliable power, maintain the grid, and plan for future needs. These territories help spread costs fairly, establish accountability, and prevent duplicate infrastructure.
Electric cooperatives follow the same model, investing for the long term and returning excess revenues to member-consumers.
Deregulation would change the equation. Large customers could choose competing electricity suppliers while still relying on local utility infrastructure. Who pays when customers leave but the costs remain?
Not guaranteed savings
In 2025, residential customers in states with some form of deregulation, plus the District of Columbia, paid an average of 21.84 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared with 15.60 cents in fully regulated states — a 40% price premium. From 2012 through 2021, residential rates in deregulated states rose about 80% faster.
Indiana’s 2025 average residential rate was 16.23 cents per kWh, compared with 20.01 cents in Michigan, 17.69 cents in Illinois, and 16.96 cents in Ohio.
Competition hasn’t always delivered savings. Illinois customers switching to alternative suppliers paid more than $2 billion above utility default rates over a decade. In Ohio, 72% of the most popular competitive residential offers exceeded the utility default rate, with overpriced offers averaging 25% to 30% more.
Competition alone doesn’t guarantee lower bills.
Who pays when some leave?
Power plants, substations, transmission lines, and distribution systems require major long-term investments. Those costs remain regardless of who supplies the electricity.
If large customers leave their utility’s generation service, more fixed costs could fall on those who stay — including homeowners, farmers, small businesses, and rural cooperative members.
The infrastructure doesn’t disappear when customers switch suppliers. Neither do the costs of maintaining it.
Deregulation could also weaken local accountability for decisions affecting affordability, reliability, and cost allocation.
Protect what works for Indiana
After more than 25 years of experience with deregulation in other states, it’s clear that it is a failed policy experiment that should not be replicated here in Indiana. Indiana’s regulated model emphasizes reliable service, long-term planning, and an obligation to serve all customers.
Electric cooperatives remain opposed to deregulation in Indiana and will work to prevent its adoption.
Indiana’s electric future should put reliable service, fair costs, and all customers first.
