Maryland BGE Electric Choice: Compare Rates at 1000 kWh

If you live or run a small shop in Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) territory, electric choice is not about swapping the company that fixes a downed line. It is about shopping the supply—the generation commodity billed in cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh)—while BGE keeps delivering power over regulated wires. That split is the whole game. Miss it, and a "cheaper" offer can look like a bargain while your bill barely moves.

This guide is built for the moment most people actually shop: staring at a bill, trying to compare a supplier's rate to BGE's default generation service, and wanting a clean answer at a standard load of 1,000 kWh. That load is a round yardstick, not a promise your home uses exactly that amount. Use it to convert rates into dollars, then scale to your real usage.

What BGE electric choice actually changes

¹ let electric customers in participating states pick among competitive suppliers rather than buying generation only from the local utility. Maryland is one of those markets: a large share of state sales already moves through competitive channels. In its ², the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports 27.1 million megawatt-hours of energy-only provider sales alongside 32.0 million megawatt-hours of full-service provider sales—evidence that choice is not a niche feature.

In plain English: the competitive supplier sells you the energy, and the utility still runs the poles, reads the meter, and restores outages. The Federal Trade Commission has long described retail restructuring the same way—customers may choose a supplier while transmission and distribution remain regulated (³).

For a Baltimore-area address, that utility is typically BGE. Marketplace explainers for the city describe Baltimore as BGE territory on the PJM grid, with supply shoppable and delivery staying with the utility (⁴). The comparison method does not change if your Zip code sits under a different Maryland delivery company—the host utility logo changes, the supply-versus-delivery logic does not (⁵).

What choice does not change: reliability obligations of the wires company, most public-purpose charges, and the basic structure of a utility bill that still rolls regulated delivery into the total.

How your bill splits: supply, delivery, and everything else

EIA's price explainers are blunt about what sits inside a retail electric price. Generation is usually the largest cost component, but you also pay for the transmission and distribution system—the network that moves power from plants to meters—plus financing, operations, weather damage repairs, and regulatory overlays (⁶). In states with retail competition, commissions often leave wires rates regulated while generation prices are set in markets or through competitive retail contracts (⁶).

That is why a supplier's one-page offer is almost never your whole per-kWh world. As WattKarma puts it for Maryland shoppers, a marketer's headline price is typically the supply slice; delivery, policy charges, and riders still show up on the utility portion of a consolidated bill (⁵). EIA average retail prices by state also blend more than generation alone—they come from revenues divided by kilowatt-hours sold across the delivered product—so they are a backdrop for affordability, not a substitute for the "price to compare" line used for supplier shopping (⁵; ²).

Two practical implications:

1. Compare supply to supply. Match a competitive rate to BGE's Standard Offer Service generation charges, not to your all-in average cents per kWh on the whole bill.
2. Expect seasonality. EIA notes that electricity costs to serve load generally run highest in summer when demand rises and more expensive plants come online (⁶). Your 1,000 kWh summer month and your 1,000 kWh shoulder-season month can tell different stories even at the same contract rate if riders move.

Standard Offer Service and the price you compare against

If you never enroll with a retail supplier, you buy generation through BGE's Standard Offer Service (SOS)—the default product competitive offers are measured against. EIA describes standard offer / alternative service rates as being set by auctions or administratively, designed to buffer customers from sharp wholesale swings, and often adjusting more slowly than market prices (¹).

Maryland regulators lean on bill language so customers can make that apples-to-apples check. When the Maryland Public Service Commission addressed supplier consolidated billing rules, it defined "Supply Price Comparison Information" as the rate and wording the Commission may require on a bill so customers can make meaningful comparisons between competitive supplier prices and the utility's standard offer or sales service (⁷).

BGE SOS filings show why you should grab a current figure rather than memorizing last year's rumor. Key mechanics from recent coverage:

• The SOS energy rate reflects energy, capacity, and related full-requirements costs, but excludes certain transmission costs (such as NITS) and the SOS administrative charge (⁸).
• For June 1–September 30, 2025, BGE's filed residential (Rate R) energy rate was 11.420 cents/kWh, up from 10.019 cents/kWh through May 31, 2025, after final PJM capacity costs replaced a lower proxy (⁸).
• BGE's "Total Generation Rate" for Schedule R residential customers for June 1–September 30, 2026 was filed at 12.519 cents/kWh, defined to include the base energy rate, the SOS admin charge, and applicable taxes on those rates—but not bypassable transmission and not bypassable Rider 8 (⁹).
• The SOS admin charge typically changes every four months, so the "all-in" SOS generation number moves even when the base energy rate is locked for a season (⁹).

Treat those filings as worked examples of how SOS is built—not as a forever ticket price. Your live Price-to-Compare / supply comparison line on a current BGE bill (or current utility posting) is what you should use the day you shop.

Comparing rates at 1000 kWh: a worked example

A kilowatt-hour is the unit on your meter. Multiply cents per kWh × 1,000 ÷ 100 and you get dollars for a 1,000 kWh month of that charge:

Monthly $ ≈ rate (¢/kWh) × 10

Using the filed SOS figures above as classroom examples:

Read the table the way a careful shopper would. The first two rows are generation-side benchmarks you can put next to a supplier's supply rate. The last two rows are all-in residential averages—they include delivery and other charges people still pay after they switch supply. Maryland's April 2026 residential average of 22.07 ¢/kWh sat well above the U.S. residential average of 18.83 ¢/kWh that month (¹⁰). For 2024 as a whole, Maryland's all-sector average retail price was 15.04 ¢/kWh (²)—a reminder that "the" Maryland rate depends on sector mix and which year you pull.

Now walk a fictional competitive offer. Suppose a fixed plan advertises 10.9 ¢/kWh for supply with no monthly fee:

• Supply cost at 1,000 kWh = $109.00
• Versus the summer 2025 SOS energy example of $114.20 → about $5.20/month of generation-side headroom before early-termination risk or missing riders
• Versus the summer 2026 SOS Total Generation Rate example of $125.19 → about $16.19/month on that generation stack—only if the offer's fine print is truly comparable to that Total Generation Rate definition

If the same plan adds a $9.95 monthly base charge, add that fee before you celebrate: $109.00 + $9.95 = $118.95 at 1,000 kWh, and the "win" against SOS can disappear. Always convert adders into cents per kWh at your usage: $9.95 ÷ 1,000 kWh = 0.995 ¢/kWh.

Scale honestly. If your last twelve bills average 750 kWh, multiply the 1,000 kWh dollars by 0.75. If you run 1,400 kWh in July, multiply by 1.4. The 1,000 kWh frame is a common language—not a usage forecast.

Fixed, variable, and renewable offers: what the label really means

Fixed-rate supply locks a cents-per-kWh price for a contract term. It does not freeze your total bill—your kWh still move with weather and behavior, and regulated delivery still adjusts under utility rate cases. Fixed can be valuable when SOS auctions or capacity costs are pushing default rates up, as BGE's summer 2025 capacity true-up illustrated (⁸).

Variable or month-to-month supply can start low and later exceed SOS. EIA's point about wholesale prices changing minute by minute while most retail customers pay smoothed seasonal prices is the backdrop (⁶): a variable retail product may track market stress more aggressively than SOS does.

Time-of-use shapes (including SOS TOU products reflected in BGE tariff filings) price energy differently by period. Comparing a flat supplier rate to a TOU SOS product requires weighting by when you actually use power—not a single 1,000 kWh multiplier blindly applied.

Renewable or "green" offers add an attribute shoppers often care about, but the FTC has emphasized for decades that consumers generally cannot verify generation attributes themselves, so advertising must be truthful, non-deceptive, and substantiated (¹¹; ³). Pay for renewable claims the way you would pay for any premium: know the incremental cents per kWh at 1,000 kWh, and know what documentation the offer actually provides.

Maryland already has a meaningful competitive sales footprint (²), which means you will see crowded offer shelves—fixed, variable, green, and promotional. Volume of choice is not the same as clarity of choice.

Contract traps that erase a paper savings

FTC staff comments on retail energy markets warn that price comparisons advertising monthly savings without disclosing a much larger early termination fee can push customers into "penny-wise but pound-foolish" decisions (¹²). The arithmetic is simple: a $6/month generation savings is wiped out by a $150 exit fee if you move or switch again in year one.

Watch for:

• Early termination fees (ETFs). Convert them to months of savings at 1,000 kWh before you sign.
• Teaser periods. A low intro rate that floats later is not a fixed win at 1,000 kWh for twelve months.
• Automatic renewal into a new product type. Confirm what happens at term end.
• Incomplete bill comparisons. Maryland's own "Supply Price Comparison Information" concept exists because regulators know customers need a clear SOS benchmark on the bill (⁷).
• Overclaimed savings. Commission advertising law, as summarized by the FTC, treats deception as a material misrepresentation or omission likely to mislead reasonable consumers, and requires claims to be substantiated (¹¹).

Also remember admin-charge drift on the utility side: BGE's SOS admin charge updates on a roughly four-month cycle in recent filings (⁹). A supplier fixed rate can look better or worse after the next SOS admin update even if your contract did not change.

A practical shopping workflow for homes and small businesses

1. Pull three to twelve months of bills. Note average kWh, peak month kWh, and whether you are on SOS or already with a supplier.
2. Copy the current supply comparison / SOS figure as defined for your bill—do not invent a statewide rumor mill rate. Use filings like the Total Generation Rate definition only as a map of which components belong in the comparison (⁹; ⁷).
3. Normalize every offer to 1,000 kWh (rate × 10), then rescale to your average kWh. Add monthly fees.
4. Read term length, ETF, renewal, and whether transmission/riders are included or passed through. WattKarma's Maryland explainer stresses keeping a recent utility bill beside the offer sheet so you can see what still moves with usage and seasons (⁵).
5. Prefer clear fixed math when you need budget certainty; treat variables as active monitoring products.
6. Cut usage in parallel. Independent of supplier, ENERGY STAR explains that certified products meet efficiency specifications that help reduce energy use and cost (¹³). A 10% load reduction on 1,000 kWh saves as much supply cost as shaving about 10% off the supply rate—without an ETF.
7. For small businesses, use actual interval or monthly demand patterns if you have them. A restaurant's 1,000 kWh is not a warehouse's 1,000 kWh in timing even when the monthly totals match, and TOU or capacity pass-throughs can diverge.

When switching beats staying on SOS (and when it does not)

Switching tends to pencil out when a transparent fixed supply rate plus fees beats the current SOS generation stack by enough margin to cover ETF risk over the months you will keep the plan—and when you value a locked number during periods when SOS is being revised upward with capacity or auction costs (⁸).

Staying on SOS tends to pencil out when offers are only "cheap" after ignoring fees, when the term forces a renewal gamble you dislike, or when the offer trails the live supply comparison information on your bill. SOS exists as a default precisely so you are not forced into a bad market moment (¹).

Either way, shrink the bill two ways. Shop the competitive slice carefully at a 1,000 kWh yardstick, and reduce the kWh themselves with efficiency upgrades and seasonal habits (¹³; ⁶). In a state where residential all-in averages have recently run above the national residential average (¹⁰), both levers matter.

The punchline: Maryland BGE electric choice rewards arithmetic, not vibes. Convert rates to dollars at 1,000 kWh, compare like components to SOS, read the exit fee, then decide. The wires company will still be BGE either way—the only question is whether the supply line on next month's bill earned the contract you signed.