How to read these electricity prices
This page tracks what Americans pay for electricity — the average retail price per kilowatt-hour for the country, each census division and every state, broken out for homes, businesses and industry. The sections below explain where the numbers come from, why they differ so much from state to state, and how to read them.
Where the data comes from
Every figure here is from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which collects revenue, sales and customer counts from electric utilities and power marketers every month. The average price is the revenue utilities collected divided by the kilowatt-hours they sold. That makes it an all-in figure: it folds energy, delivery and fixed monthly charges into one number per kilowatt-hour, rather than the rate printed on any single tariff.
The data arrives monthly with a lag of roughly two months — the EIA publishes each month’s figures late in the month after next, so July’s prices arrive in late September. Recent months are based on a sample of utilities and are revised once the EIA’s annual census of every utility is complete, so the last year or so can shift slightly.
Why states differ
The spread between states is wide — the most expensive state pays more than three times what the cheapest does, and even on the mainland the gap is well over double — and it comes mostly from how the power is made and delivered. Generation mix is the first factor: states that generate from cheap local hydro, natural gas or coal tend to be cheaper, while states that must import fuel, like Hawaii burning oil, pay the most. The second is the cost of the wires — building, maintaining and hardening transmission and distribution networks, including wildfire mitigation in the West — which shows up directly in delivery charges.
Regulation matters too. In most states a regulated utility owns the whole chain and a state commission sets its rates. Others restructured their markets, letting customers buy power from competing retail suppliers while the local utility still delivers it; the prices here average across both kinds of customer. On top of that sit state policy costs, such as renewable-energy and efficiency programs, which are recovered through bills.
Homes versus business and industry
Residential electricity costs more per kilowatt-hour than industrial electricity because it costs more to deliver. A factory takes power at high voltage straight off the transmission system in large, steady volumes, while homes need the whole low-voltage distribution network — substations, poles, transformers and meters — spread across millions of small accounts. Commercial customers, from shops to offices to data centers, sit between the two. The “all sectors” figure is the average across every kilowatt-hour sold, so it leans toward whichever sector buys the most power in a state.
Seasonality
Electricity prices move with the seasons. Many utilities charge higher rates in summer when demand peaks, and wholesale power costs rise with air-conditioning load. At the same time, fixed monthly charges are spread over more kilowatt-hours in high-use months, which pulls the average price down, so the pattern differs from state to state — the seasonal chart above shows it for whichever area you pick. Because of that seasonality this page measures changes year over year, comparing a month with the same month a year earlier, rather than month over month.
The average monthly bill
The bill figure comes from the same EIA data: total residential revenue over the last twelve months, divided by the average number of residential customers, divided by twelve. Using a full year smooths out the summer and winter peaks. It is an average across every household in the state, so an individual bill depends on how much electricity that home uses — which is why some states with modest prices still have high bills: heavy air-conditioning or electric heating means more kilowatt-hours.
Generation mix
The “what powers” card shows the share of electricity generated by power plants in the state over the last twelve months, by fuel, from utility-scale plants only — rooftop solar is not included. Power flows across state lines, so the plants in a state are not exactly what its customers consume, but the mix is a good guide to why a state’s prices sit where they do and how exposed they are to natural gas prices in particular.