ComEd Still Pays About $4,050 Toward a Home Battery. As of October 19, You No Longer Have to Take Hourly Pricing for It.

If you’re a ComEd customer pricing a home battery, the rebate just lost its worst string. ComEd still pays $300 for every kilowatt-hour of battery capacity. On a common 13.5 kWh battery, that’s $4,050. Until October 19, collecting it meant moving your electricity supply onto hourly market pricing and staying there for the life of the battery.

That rule is gone. What’s left is a smaller ask, and you should read it before you sign.

The old deal followed your house

ComEd’s 2026 rebate terms said a home with a rebated battery “must take electric power and energy supply from ComEd under any Qualifying Utility Product” and keep it “for the life of the energy storage facility.” For ComEd homes, that meant Hourly Pricing, a supply rate that moves with the wholesale market every hour of every day.

Solar company Palmetto’s help center spelled out the part that stung: you “and any successor customers at your residence” had to stay on it. Translation: the buyer of your house inherited your rate.

ComEd’s revised rebate tariff, filed with the Illinois Commerce Commission on September 4 and effective October 19, drops that condition. The new list of requirements doesn’t mention a qualifying supply product at all. It also opens the rebate to batteries with no solar panels, as long as they connected to ComEd’s grid after June 1, 2026 and charge only from the grid.

Here’s the catch that stayed

Every rebated battery still has to join ComEd’s Scheduled Dispatch Virtual Power Plant for five summers. From June 1 through September 30, Monday through Friday, 4 to 6 p.m., your battery pushes out the kilowatt level you committed in your agreement.

ComEd pays $10 per committed kilowatt per summer.

On a 13.5 kWh battery, the rebate is $4,050 up front. Commit 5 kilowatts and the summer program pays $50 a year, or $250 over the five-year term. Five kilowatts for two hours is 10 kWh out of a 13.5 kWh battery, every summer weekday afternoon. If a July storm knocks your power out at 7 p.m., you may be starting the night with a battery that’s mostly spent.

That’s a fair trade for $4,050. The lifetime hourly-rate lock was the bad part, and it’s gone. Whether a battery is worth buying at all is still your call. The rebate just stopped tying your house to a rate for it.

Check these before you sign

Pull the battery’s spec sheet. ComEd pays on no more than 5 kWh of storage per kilowatt of power output, so a 13.5 kWh battery needs at least 2.7 kW of output to collect the full $4,050.

Ask your installer what kilowatt figure goes into the virtual power plant agreement, and how much charge that leaves you for a summer-evening outage. Lower commitment, more backup, smaller check.

Ask your tax preparer about the rebate. ComEd’s own terms say it may be taxable and that anything over $600 gets reported to the IRS.

No panels? You can still qualify, but ComEd won’t accept standalone battery applications until January 1, 2027. Price the deal knowing the check comes next year at the earliest.

Already took the rebate under the old rules? Don’t drop Hourly Pricing on your own. Ask ComEd in writing whether the new terms reach your battery.

Then put your own bill through our solar calculator, and compare installers on our solar hub and best solar picks.

The fine print

The $300 per kWh figure applies to residential and small business customers from January 1, 2027 through December 31, 2029, per ComEd’s Informational Sheet No. 48. For 2030, standalone storage drops to $250 and the paired-storage amount is listed as to be set by the Commission. ComEd has to pay within 60 days once your application is complete and the battery is running. The changes come from Illinois Public Act 104-0458, enacted January 8, 2026.

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