Illinois caps the down payment for a payment plan before your heat gets shut off at 10%

How much down payment for a payment plan before your heat gets shut off in Illinois

If you live in Illinois and want to know how much down payment you need for a payment plan before your heat gets shut off this winter, the Illinois Commerce Commission gives a direct answer, no more than 10%. The rule runs from December 1 through March 31. During that window, a utility must first offer a Deferred Payment Agreement, a formal plan that lets a customer pay a past due balance over time, with a down payment no larger than 10% of what is owed. A utility also cannot disconnect heat related service at all whenever the forecast calls for 32 degrees Fahrenheit or below, or on a day before a holiday or weekend when the forecast is expected to drop to freezing.

The winter weather rule protects customers who might otherwise struggle to stay warm during the coldest months of the year.

Doug Scott, Chairman, Illinois Commerce Commission. Source 1.

Why this is not a new benefit from the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act

News coverage in January 2026 linked the 10% cap to the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act, a much larger 2025 energy law also known as Senate Bill 25. This site checked the December 2025 press release in which the Illinois Commerce Commission announced this season winter rule, the primary document behind the requirement, and found no mention of that act anywhere in it. The press release presents the 10% cap and the 32 degree trigger as a standing winter weather rule the Commission reaffirms every year, not a new requirement. The Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act is a separate law. Its own provisions, 3 gigawatts of new battery storage, expanded electric vehicle charging and the end of a moratorium on large scale nuclear construction, mostly start June 1, 2026, and carry a surcharge on electric bills beginning in 2030. That surcharge does not apply to the winter payment plan described above.

What a protected customer gets

Before any disconnection for nonpayment during the rule period, a utility must tell the customer how to reach public and private aid agencies and give the customer the chance to accept or refuse the Deferred Payment Agreement. Some customers cannot be disconnected for a past due balance at all during the rule period, participants in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, participants in a Percentage of Income Payment Plan, customers who heat with electricity, and military personnel and veterans. Ameren, Nicor, North Shore and Peoples Gas customers, and ComEd electric customers, who qualify for federal home heating assistance or whose income is at or below 300% of the federal poverty level, can also get a monthly discount on their bills. None of this cancels the balance owed. It only changes when and how much a utility can demand before cutting service.

The scale of disconnections this protects against

The need for this protection is not shrinking. The Illinois Commerce Commission count, reported by Grist, put disconnection notices mailed across Illinois at more than 170,000 in June 2025 alone, more than 3 times the roughly 46,000 mailed the same month a year before. That is a single month comparison, not an annual total.

Illinois numbers sit inside a much larger national pattern. Utilities reported 13,400,000 residential electric disconnections and 1,700,000 residential natural gas disconnections nationwide in 2024 to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a federal statistical agency, with no Illinois specific breakdown in that report. Electric service gets cut far more often than gas service nationwide, and the Illinois winter rule exists specifically to slow that kind of cutoff during the coldest months of the year.