Energy Markets We Serve

Which states are energy deregulated?

Sixteen U.S. jurisdictions have retail energy choice for commercial customers, meaning a business can buy its electricity or natural gas supply from a competitive supplier rather than the local utility: Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Delaware, Michigan, Washington, D.C. and California. Those are the 16 markets Inertia Resources serves.

Deregulated electricity states and deregulated gas states are not the same list

Electricity and natural gas were opened to competition under separate state laws, so the two lists overlap but do not match. Several states with no electricity choice, among them Georgia, Florida and Virginia for most customers, allow commercial gas choice through their utilities' transportation programs. Michigan caps electricity choice at 10% of each utility's load, and California routes it through Direct Access and community choice aggregation with limited enrollment. Within every deregulated state, customers of municipal utilities and electric cooperatives (Austin Energy, CPS Energy in San Antonio, LADWP, Lansing BWL) generally cannot switch suppliers at all. Virginia has a page here for its gas and demand-side work even though it is not counted among the 16.

What a buyer in a deregulated state gets is the supply portion of the bill, typically 40% to 70% of the total, put out to competition. Delivery stays with the utility everywhere. How that competition is run is covered under commercial energy broker, and the regulated-market alternative, where savings come from tariff optimization and bill auditing rather than switching, is explained on each state page.