Pepco covers every District electric meter; Washington Gas covers District gas delivery
Inside the District of Columbia there is not a menu of investor-owned electric companies. Pepco is the electric distribution company for the entire District. Washington Gas is the gas distribution company for District gas service. That two-utility map is simpler than Maryland’s BGE-versus-Pepco-versus-Potomac Edison patchwork and simpler than Virginia’s mixed choice rules. It is also why a District laundry file should never be titled “mid-Atlantic Pepco” as if Silver Spring and a Ward 5 storefront shared one Standard Offer Service.
Retail choice in the District lets eligible customers buy electricity and natural gas from DCPSC-licensed competitive suppliers. Pepco and Washington Gas remain the delivery companies. DCPowerConnect, brought to you by the Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia, is the official electric comparison gateway. Choosing a supplier does not create a second wires company and does not move a gas leak response to an electric marketer.
Ward-to-ward load can differ—federal daytime traffic, university calendars, and rowhouse renter mix change how washers run—without changing the legal delivery names. Procurement still starts with Pepco electric delivery and Washington Gas gas delivery. Neighborhood story is demand context. Utility legal names are the shopping keys.
Mixed-use buildings sometimes hide the commercial electric account behind a landlord allocation. Confirm the Pepco account number, rate schedule, and whether you are the customer of record before you enroll a supplier. A tenant that pays a “utilities included” add-on is not shopping SOS. A tenant that holds the Pepco commercial account is. The District map does not erase lease structure.
If you also operate a Maryland store, keep a physical separator in the energy binder: District Pepco plus Washington Gas plus DCPowerConnect on one side; Maryland Pepco or BGE plus Maryland portals on the other. Crossing those sides is the error Silver Spring and District pages both exist to stop. This statewide hub states the District side only.
DCPowerConnect is a DCPSC electric comparison site, not a Maryland Pepco clone
DCPowerConnect identifies itself as the official retail-choice site for the District. It is how the Commission presents licensed electricity suppliers and educational material about fixed, variable, and renewable options. It is not MDElectricChoice, not a Maryland PSC supplier search, and not Pepco’s Maryland residential shopping content. Entering a District address into a Maryland tool will return the wrong default-service story.
Before you compare cards, the site itself recommends learning the vocabulary and reviewing your current usage and supply charges. For a laundry that means opening the Pepco invoice, isolating Standard Offer Service or the current supplier generation line from Pepco delivery, and noting the commercial schedule. Residential teaser cards are the wrong aisle even when they appear on the same domain.
Commercial demand accounts may still need a direct supplier quote after you use the portal as a directory. DCPowerConnect is a gateway and an education surface. It does not automatically produce a small-commercial contract that matches every Pepco GS or similar schedule. If a card cannot name your District rate class, keep shopping or stay on SOS while you request a written commercial offer.
The Commission does not recommend a particular retail supplier. Portal placement is not an endorsement of savings. This hub will not invent a District cents-per-kilowatt-hour SOS number or a guaranteed discount. Your comparison is the SOS or supplier generation line on your bill versus the dated offer in front of you, plus contract term and fees.
Bookmark dcpowerconnect.com next to dcpsc.org. Use the portal for electric offer context and the Commission site for licensing, retail-choice explainers, and reports. Pepco’s outage tools stay on the Pepco side of the folder. Three bookmarks prevent a manager from calling the portal vendor when the feeder is out.
Washington Gas marketers are licensed separately and may not appear as portal cards
DCPowerConnect’s FAQ states that you cannot currently compare natural-gas offers on the site, though the Commission provides an updated list of approved natural-gas suppliers and you should contact those suppliers directly for product and pricing details. That sentence is the District-specific gas rule this hub emphasizes. Dual-fuel shopping is real. Dual-fuel shopping is not a single comparison grid.
Washington Gas remains the delivery company after a gas-supplier enrollment. Customer-choice materials for the District state that competitive gas suppliers must be licensed by the DCPSC and that eligible customers can participate in the Customer Choice Program. Leak and odor calls still go to Washington Gas. A marketer confirmation does not transfer emergency response.
Electric SOS comparisons and gas marketer quotes should sit in separate tabs. A winter week that raises both Pepco kWh and dryer therms still produces two delivery tariffs and two commodity decisions. Bundling them into one “energy savings” email is how owners lose the ability to audit either fuel when the invoice arrives.
If your dryers are electric, the gas section of this hub may not apply to equipment—but the building may still have a Washington Gas meter for heat or water. Confirm which meters you actually pay. Shopping a gas marketer for a meter the landlord controls is wasted time. Shopping only electric SOS while a large gas dryer bill sits unexamined is the opposite error.
Ask any dual-fuel salesperson for two license numbers—electric supplier and gas supplier—and two enrollment confirmations. If they can only show an electric DCPowerConnect-style card, treat gas as unfinished. The FAQ already told you the portal will not finish gas for you.
Pepco District Standard Offer Service is not Pepco Maryland SOS
Pepco the delivery company operates on both sides of Eastern Avenue. Pepco Standard Offer Service does not. District SOS is the default electric generation Pepco provides to District customers who have not chosen a DCPSC-licensed supplier. Maryland Pepco SOS is a Maryland Public Service Commission default-service product with its own auctions, class rules, and shopping sites. A quote labeled “Pepco commercial” that does not say District of Columbia is unfinished.
DCPSC materials on understanding the electric bill describe SOS as the supply you receive unless you have chosen a third-party supplier, with Pepco buying wholesale supply through competitive auctions that the Commission monitors. That auction story is about default generation procurement. It is not Pepco selling a shoppable retail energy brand, and it is not permission to use a Maryland SOS screenshot as the District benchmark.
Cross-border owners—Silver Spring plus a District store, or Alexandria plus a District store—need two default-generation files. Virginia is not a full retail-choice mirror of the District. Maryland Pepco is not District Pepco SOS. The delivery trucks may share a corporate family. The shopping law does not.
When a supplier emails a “DMV commercial rate,” ask which SOS, which commission, and which portal they used. If the answer is MDElectricChoice or a Maryland Pepco class, it does not enroll a District meter. If the answer is a Virginia tariff, it does not enroll a District meter. Only a DCPSC-licensed product compared to District SOS belongs in the District folder.
Keep the words “Pepco DC SOS” on every District quote sheet. The extra two letters are the entire difference between a usable benchmark and a Maryland file that will fail enrollment or misstate the generation line after the first District bill.
PJM wholesale auctions sit behind District SOS—they are not a retail shopping aisle
The District sits in PJM Interconnection. Pepco’s SOS auctions buy wholesale energy in that regional market. Competitive suppliers also serve District load from PJM-settled positions. Shared wholesale geography explains why generation costs can move. It does not create a PJM retail storefront where a laundry picks a zone price and skips DCPSC licensing.
Do not paste a Maryland BGE SOS number, a Pepco Maryland SOS number, or a PJM Western Hub screenshot into a District laundry model and call it a benchmark. The legally relevant default generation for a District Pepco account is Pepco District SOS as published for your class. PJM is context. SOS is the comparison line.
Demand charges and delivery riders on Pepco commercial schedules are still Pepco delivery economics after you leave SOS. A supplier that talks only about energy and never asks for demand history is not modeling an urban laundry. This hub will not invent a demand-charge cents figure. It will say that switching supply does not shop away Pepco’s regulated demand and delivery components.
Interval data, if you have it, helps a supplier see afternoon cooling stacked on washer peaks. ACS housing statistics do not. Neighborhood renter share can explain foot traffic; it cannot set SOS or a supplier rate. Use Census figures, if you use them at all, as demand context in a different memo.
When PJM has a high-price day, owners often blame “the supplier” or “Pepco” interchangeably. Split the bill. If the spike is in SOS or supplier generation, you are looking at commodity. If the spike is in Pepco demand or delivery riders, you are looking at wires. Retail choice only addresses the first group.
The 2023 DCPSC biennial fuel-mix report discusses commercial alternative-supplier participation
The Commission’s 2023 biennial report on fuel mix explains how electricity sold in the District was generated and how that mix compares with the wider PJM region. Suppliers, including Pepco, report fuel-mix statistics so customers can make more informed environmental choices when they use retail choice. The report is a disclosure and monitoring document. It is not a shopping cart and not a savings calculator.
That same report discusses customers who receive electricity from a licensed alternative electricity supplier rather than remaining on Pepco SOS, including a discussion of commercial-account participation, and it points readers to DCPowerConnect. This hub will not restate a participation percentage as if it were a 2026 enrollment target. If you need the Commission’s historical wording, open the biennial PDF the Commission published.
Participation in alternative supply is evidence that District commercial accounts can shop. It is not evidence that your laundry should shop, or that a particular offer beats SOS. A high commercial participation share in a past report year can coexist with offers that are worse than current SOS for a 24/7 laundry profile. Compare documents, not crowd behavior.
Fuel-mix percentages in the report describe generation sources, not your dryer therms and not your Pepco demand charge. A supplier that markets a renewable product is making a generation-attribute claim you can read against the report’s RPS discussion. That claim still sits on the supply side of the bill. Pepco still delivers the electrons.
File the biennial PDF beside your DCPowerConnect screenshot when you brief a partner. The report supports the statement that commercial alternative-supplier participation is a documented District phenomenon. It does not support a promised discount, a store count, or a copied Maryland fuel-mix slide.
Pepco demand and delivery riders remain after any certified-supplier enrollment
Switching from Pepco SOS to a DCPSC-certified supplier changes the generation supplier of record. Pepco still owns distribution, still reads the meter, still bills delivery, and still restores outages. Washington Gas still owns gas delivery if you also switch gas commodity. Retail choice is a commodity election. It is not a wires election.
Urban laundries often see demand determinants on commercial Pepco schedules. Those determinants do not disappear because a supplier logo appears on a consolidated invoice. Ask for twelve months of demand and usage before you sign. A generation-only teaser that ignores demand is an incomplete District commercial quote.
Staff should call Pepco for a dark store and Washington Gas for a gas odor, exactly as they did on SOS. DCPowerConnect and the supplier handle contract and billing questions. Put Pepco’s outage channel on the wall. Put the supplier in the office binder. After a storm, estimated reads can scramble one month’s generation comparison; still split delivery from supply before you argue with either company.
If you return to SOS, confirm Pepco’s timing and any supplier termination fee. DCPowerConnect FAQ language describes returning to default supply services from Pepco or Washington Gas after a contract ends. Ask for the effective date in writing. Do not assume a same-day SOS return on a verbal cancellation.
Close every District procurement with a three-line stamp: Pepco District SOS versus named electric supplier; Washington Gas default commodity versus named gas supplier if any; Pepco and Washington Gas still deliver and still restore. That stamp is the content fingerprint of District laundry energy. Anything that erases “District” or substitutes Maryland Pepco SOS fails the stamp.
