Two buyers close on Naperville homes in the same week. Both go to set up electric service the way they always have, a quick call or web form to ComEd, power live within a day or two. The first buyer's setup goes exactly like that. The second spends four days confused, discovers the address isn't on ComEd's grid at all, and has to start over with a city account, a deposit, and a two-business-day wait before the meter is officially theirs.
Both buyers have Naperville addresses. Both closed on similar homes in the same general price range. The difference has nothing to do with the house and everything to do with which utility actually serves that specific parcel, a detail that rarely surfaces until moving week, which is the worst possible time to learn it.
Naperville Owns Its Own Electric Company, and Most of Chicagoland Doesn't
The City of Naperville bought a private company called Naperville Electric Co. in 1899 for $18,000, back when the town had roughly 2,600 residents and 350 customers. That municipal utility, now run through the city's Department of Public Utilities and often shortened to DPU-E, still exists and still serves the city directly. Today it brings power to more than 62,000 customers a month, according to the city's own electric utility page.
That matters because most of the western and northern suburbs around Naperville, and most of Chicagoland generally, get their electricity from ComEd. ComEd operates inside Illinois's deregulated retail electric market, where residents can shop among competing suppliers for a better rate. DPU-E doesn't work that way. Because it's owned by the city rather than sold on a competitive retail market, there's no supplier to shop for if your home falls inside the utility's service area. One city sets the rate through ordinance, one bill arrives, and that's the extent of the decision.
The Setup Process Looks Nothing Like ComEd's
For a buyer who has only ever lived in ComEd territory, the differences show up immediately at signup.
Step | Typical ComEd-area suburb | City of Naperville (DPU-E) |
|---|---|---|
Where to sign up | ComEd.com or phone, often same day | Must first create an account through the city's Help Center portal |
Notice required | Same-day or next-day service common | Minimum two business days before service starts or stops |
Deposit | Varies by supplier and credit history | $150 for electric, or two months' estimated usage, whichever is greater |
Water bill | Separate provider, separate bill | Combined with electric on one city bill |
Supplier choice | Dozens of retail suppliers compete for your business | None, DPU-E is not part of the deregulated market |
That two-business-day notice requirement is easy to miss if a closing lands on a Thursday or Friday and a buyer assumes utilities work the way they always have. A mover, a painter finishing touch-ups, or a family doing a final walkthrough all assume the lights will be on. If nobody submitted the request early enough, they might not be.
The Deposit Nobody Puts on Their Closing Budget
Under Naperville's Municipal Code, sections 8-1C-3.12 and 8-2C-8, every new utility customer pays a deposit before service starts: $150 for electric, $100 for water and wastewater, or an amount equal to two months of estimated usage at that address, whichever number is higher. The city holds that deposit to protect itself against delinquent accounts, not as a fee tied to the transaction itself.
That detail matters because this deposit sits entirely outside the closing disclosure. It isn't part of the mortgage, the earnest money, or the inspection costs a buyer is already tracking. It's a separate transaction with the city's Finance Department, on its own timeline, and it's easy to forget when a household is juggling a dozen other move-in costs the same week.
The refund mechanics are worth knowing too, because they don't work the way most deposits do. Owner-occupants get the deposit back automatically after two years of on-time payment, but not as a check. It shows up as a credit applied to a future bill. Renters only get it back when they close the account entirely. And if a property is being purchased as a rental, the city asks landlords to voluntarily register the rental address specifically so the tenant's deposit is held correctly. Skip that step and the city may be unable to hold the deposit for that unit, while the property owner still remains liable for any unpaid balance, which the city can pursue through a lien against the property.
The Other Direction: Some Naperville Addresses Are on ComEd
Here's where the assumption cuts the other way. Not every parcel with a Naperville mailing address is inside DPU-E's footprint. As the local resource site Naperville.com puts it, ComEd provides electric service to portions of Naperville outside the city's own electric utility service area, tied into the city's grid at several transmission points. There have also been unincorporated pockets of Naperville Township that ran electricity through a separate municipal aggregation arrangement with a supplier called MC² Energy Services, layered on top of ComEd's delivery grid, with residents automatically shifting back to ComEd's standard supply when that arrangement ends.
Put plainly, a buyer moving into one of those addresses inherits the opposite task from the one above. Instead of a city deposit and a two-day wait, they're choosing a retail electric supplier, comparing fixed and variable rate plans, and watching for contract renewal notices, none of which a DPU-E customer will ever have to think about.
The rule isn't "Naperville has its own utility." The rule is that two homes half a mile apart, both carrying a Naperville address, can sit on entirely different systems with entirely different signup steps, deposit rules, and billing structures. The only way to know which one applies to a specific house is to check that parcel directly.
What the Line Does to the Bill
The city's own numbers illustrate the DPU-E side clearly. In January 2026, the average residential customer using 844 kWh a month saw an increase of about $6, bringing the average monthly bill to $121.87, a figure the city's electric rates page describes as 16% lower than surrounding communities. The utility projects that average climbing to $129.68 by 2027, and states that figure will still sit below what it calls today's average ComEd bill.
On the ComEd side, no single number does the same job, and that's not a data gap so much as a structural difference. Because ComEd customers can shop among competing retail suppliers, rate-comparison sites tracking Naperville's ComEd-served territory in mid-2026 show real spread between providers, from about 9.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for the cheapest available plan up to a market average closer to 13.4 cents, with estimated average monthly bills landing anywhere between roughly $108 and $122 depending on usage and which supplier a household has chosen. That spread doesn't exist on the DPU-E side. Not necessarily because DPU-E is cheaper for every household in every month, but because there's no competing menu of suppliers generating a range of possible answers in the first place. The choice itself is what creates the uncertainty, and the absence of choice is what creates the single, official number.
A Recent Reminder That This Line Matters Beyond the Monthly Bill
This isn't only a billing question. On June 10 and 11, 2026, severe weather triggered a disaster declaration that made SBA disaster loans available to Naperville homeowners, renters, and businesses affected by the storm, according to the city's electric utility page. Whichever utility serves a given address is also the one that shows up first after a storm and the one whose outage map a homeowner should be watching. That's one more reason to confirm the answer before move-in rather than during the next outage.
How to Confirm This Before You Close
- Ask the seller or listing agent for a current utility bill and read the name printed at the top, not the mailing address, the actual billing entity.
- Call the city's Finance Department at (630) 420-6059 with the parcel address to confirm whether the home falls inside DPU-E's service territory.
- If it does, create a Help Center account and submit the start-service request at least two business days before you need power live, and treat the deposit as its own line item in your move-in budget.
- If the home is on ComEd instead, give yourself time to compare retail suppliers rather than defaulting to whichever plan shows up first in a search.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before Moving Week
I'm renting rather than buying. Does any of this change? The deposit still applies, but the refund timing is different. Renters get the deposit back when the account closes, not automatically after two years the way an owner-occupant's deposit works. If you're renting from a landlord who hasn't registered the address with the city, ask about it, since an unregistered rental can affect how the deposit is handled.
My home is newly built with no utility history at that address. Does the deposit still apply? Yes. The deposit is either the flat rate or two months of that location's historical usage, whichever is higher. With no history to calculate from, the flat minimum, $150 for electric and $100 for water, is what applies.
Naperville's utility setup isn't complicated once you know which side of the line your address sits on. The trouble comes from assuming every address in town works the same way, when the honest answer is that it depends on the parcel, not the zip code. That's the kind of detail worth confirming before you're standing in an empty house wondering why the lights aren't on yet.
If you're working through a Naperville purchase and want help thinking through the details that don't show up on a standard closing checklist, Nina Trivedi is glad to talk it through with you. Start the Conversation.
