CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As many communities continue to experience financial difficulty due to economic challenges, ComEd reminds customers to contact the energy company for support in paying electric bills now and lowering future bills.
“One of our missions at ComEd is to make our customers aware of the multiple ways they can save money on their electric bills,” said Melissa Washington, ComEd’s chief customer officer and senior vice president of customer operations. “Recognizing that these are trying times, ComEd encourages customers to explore all the assistance options to help keep up with past-due electric bills and take advantage of offerings that can help reduce energy consumption – and electric bills – for the life of their homes. We’re here to help our customers every step of the way.”
ComEd works with community action agencies across northern Illinois to help connect customers with bill-assistance options that will get them back on track with their utility bill payments.
“The Community and Economic Development Association (CEDA) is committed to working with Cook County communities to provide utility bill assistance through the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). CEDA has over 75 Partner Intake Sites located around Cook County,” said Latoya Butler, CEDA’s energy service director.
Bill Assistance Programs:
There are a variety of financial assistance and payment options available to help customers manage their energy bills, including:
- Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and ComEd's Supplemental Arrearage Reduction Program (SARP), which is available to ComEd residential customers who qualified to receive energy-assistance benefits from LIHEAP.
- ComEd's new Your Neighbor Fund, which is funded by donations from ComEd's 6,300 employees to provide another source of grants to help limited-income families pay their ComEd bill.
- A flexible deferred payment arrangement of up to 12 months for eligible residential customers with past-due balances. Make a down payment on the amount owed and pay the rest through installments in addition to your regular monthly bill.
- Budget billing, which provides a predictable monthly amount due based on your electricity usage from the last 12 months.
- Flexible payment options like 21-day extensions on a customer's due date.
- High-usage alerts, which let customers know when their usage is trending higher than normal to help manage overall energy use, and energy-management tips to save money now and on future energy bills.
Home Energy Savings
To help residential customers manage future electric bills, the award-winning ComEd Energy Efficiency Program offers a variety of services and incentives that can help ComEd customers manage energy use in their homes.
The first step in finding options that work for them is to sign up for a free Home Energy Savings assessment. An assessment is designed to improve the energy efficiency of a home and lower its energy costs, while enhancing the comfort of those who live within it.
Homeowners and renters, with their landlord’s permission, receive a free review of their home – either in-person or virtually – to identify areas for energy savings. An energy advisor will collect information about a home's energy features by looking at its lighting, heating, and cooling systems, water heaters and appliances. Customers then receive free and discounted energy-saving products plus personalized recommendations for saving money and energy.
By signing up for a Home Energy Savings assessment, customers can lower their energy costs and improve energy efficiency in their homes. The average customer saves over $125 a year on utility bills because of the energy-saving products installed during or after the visual assessment.
Through Home Energy Savings assessments, customers have saved more than 129 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is enough energy to power more than 15,000 ComEd customers' homes. The offering helped reduce from the air more than 109 million pounds of carbon emissions that contribute to climate change, which is the equivalent of removing nearly 11,000 cars off the road for one year or planting nearly 60,000 acres of trees.
To make it easier for families and individuals to find bill-assistance and energy-savings options that best fit their needs, ComEd encourages customers to use its Smart Assistance Manager (SAM), an online self-service tool that matches customers with programs that can help them manage their electric bills now and into the future. Customers can access SAM at ComEd.com/SAM.
ComEd is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation (NASDAQ: EXC), a Fortune 200 energy company with approximately 10 million electricity and natural gas customers – the largest number of customers in the U.S. ComEd powers the lives of more than 4 million customers across northern Illinois, or 70 percent of the state’s population. For more information visit ComEd.com and connect with the company on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.