The Illinois home battery storage rebate has paid 300 dollars per kilowatt hour since 2022
Homeowners and small businesses in Commonwealth Edison territory who add a battery to a home solar system can collect 300 dollars for every kilowatt hour of battery storage, a unit that measures how much energy the battery can hold, plus 300 dollars for every kilowatt of solar panel size installed. Larger commercial customers and community supply projects get a lower rate instead, 250 dollars for each of the same 2 units. The Illinois home battery storage rebate has paid these amounts since December 15, 2022, more than 3 years before the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act, the newest state energy law, took effect. The dollar amount is unchanged. What is new is the condition now attached to collecting it.
ComEd pays the same rate per unit for solar and battery storage within each customer tier, source 2.
Show the numbers
| Homes and small businesses, solar | 300 |
| Homes and small businesses, storage | 300 |
| Larger businesses, solar | 250 |
| Larger businesses, storage | 250 |
The new condition, agreeing to let the utility schedule the battery
The dollar amount did not change, but starting with the rebate terms ComEd published for 2026, a customer claiming the storage part of the Illinois home battery storage rebate must also agree to enroll the battery in ComEd own Scheduled Dispatch Virtual Power Plant Program. That program lets ComEd choose when the battery sends stored power back to the grid, for a set enrollment period, rather than leaving that choice entirely to the homeowner. ComEd expects that scheduled dispatch to begin March 1, 2027. This detail comes from reading ComEd own current tariff document directly, and none of the news coverage checked for this article mentions the new enrollment condition at all.
Ameren Illinois attaches the same condition, with a summer schedule
Ameren Illinois, the other of the 2 largest utilities in Illinois, ties its own energy storage rebate to the same kind of requirement, starting June 1, 2026. Ameren own bulletin to its network of installers states that scheduled dispatch is expected to begin in 2027, on weekdays from 4 in the afternoon to 6 in the evening, June through September, for home battery systems. Ameren states plainly that enrolling does not switch a customer own electricity supplier or retail rate, only when the utility can call on the stored power. Both utilities name the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act as the legal basis for the change.
Why Illinois lawmakers passed the law
The Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act passed the Illinois General Assembly on October 30, 2025, and Governor JB Pritzker signed it into law on January 8, 2026. It sets a statewide target of 3,000 megawatts of battery storage capacity, with a first procurement round seeking 1,038 megawatts by August 26, 2026, shown in the chart below.
The first procurement round targets about a third of the full statewide goal, a ratio this article calculated from the 2 sourced figures.
Show the numbers
| Initial procurement by August 2026 | 1038 |
| Full statewide storage target | 3000 |
Illinois lawmakers passed the law after electric bills for Illinois residents rose 20% to 25% in the summer of 2025, and after a regional capacity auction cleared at a record 329.17 dollars per megawatt day for June 2026, both driven in part by rising demand from data centers. The Governor own office estimates the law will save Illinois utility customers 13.4 billion dollars over the next 2 decades.
This law accomplishes our goal of saving Illinoisans hundreds of dollars on utility bills annually while transitioning the state to a more reliable energy grid.
Steve Stadelman, Illinois State Senator, a Democrat from Rockford. Source 4.