Electricity price trends by state

Where these numbers come from

Every figure here is the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s average residential price: what households in each state actually paid per kWh in a month, computed as residential revenue divided by residential sales. It is not the rate on any one tariff. It folds in fixed charges and riders, and every utility in the state, weighted by how much it sells. That makes it the right number for comparing states and following a trend, and the wrong one for predicting your own bill, which depends on your utility, your plan and when you use power.

Two measures of change are used below. The one-year change compares July 2026 with the same month a year earlier, so seasonal effects cancel out; being a single month, it can jump when a one-off charge or credit starts or ends. The ten-year change compares the average of the last 12 months with the average of the 12 months ten years earlier and expresses it as a compound rate per year, which smooths out single-month noise. EIA’s history is not complete enough to compute it for Alaska.

The last year

Between July 2025 and July 2026, the biggest increases were in Hawaii (+22.0%), New Hampshire (+16.7%), Maine (+15.8%), New York (+14.0%) and Maryland (+13.7%). The price fell in 6 states; the steepest drops were in Connecticut (-12.5%), Louisiana (-3.0%) and Utah (-2.5%). 28 of 51 states rose faster than the US average of +4.9%. Large one-year moves in either direction are worth reading with care: a regulator approving a new rate case, a fuel-cost adjustment catching up with past gas prices, or a state credit applied to bills for a few months can each move a single month by several percent.

The last ten years

Over a decade the pattern is steadier. The 12-month average rose fastest in California (+6.7% a year), the District of Columbia (+6.6% a year) and Maine (+6.5% a year), and slowest in Nevada (+1.1% a year), Kansas (+1.6% a year) and Nebraska (+1.8% a year). At the US pace of +3.6% a year, prices are about 43% higher than ten years ago; in California the increase compounds to about 91%, in Nevada to about 12%.

Expensive states have tended to get more expensive. Of the ten states with the highest price in July 2026, 9 rose faster than the US over the decade; of the ten with the lowest price, none did.

Why states move at different speeds

A residential price has two broad parts: the cost of the energy itself and the cost of the wires that deliver it. Each moves for its own reasons, and the mix differs by state.

• Fuel and the generation mix. Where much of the power comes from natural gas plants, the price follows gas prices, usually with a lag, because many utilities pass fuel costs through an adjustment clause reviewed every few months. States that rely more on hydro, nuclear or long-term contracts see smaller swings from fuel.
• Investment in the grid. Replacing ageing poles, lines and substations, connecting new generation and meeting rising demand are paid for through delivery charges over decades. Unlike fuel costs, these charges rarely fall back once they are in rates.
• Wildfires, storms and resilience. Utilities in areas exposed to wildfire or hurricanes recover the cost of restoration, wildfire mitigation and undergrounding lines from customers, and those costs can be large.
• Regulation and market structure. Rates change when a state commission approves a rate case, so prices often move in steps rather than smoothly. In states with retail choice, part of the bill depends on market supply prices or on the utility’s periodic default-service auction.
• State policy. Charges for energy-efficiency programs, renewable targets or low-income assistance appear on bills in some states and not others, and state credits can lower bills temporarily.

Islands and remote grids are a separate case: where power is generated largely from imported oil, as in Hawaii, the price tracks oil markets far more closely than anywhere on the mainland.

Summer and winter prices

The price per kWh also changes with the season, and not in the same direction everywhere. Comparing the last summer (June to August) with the last winter (December to February), the average price was higher in summer in 37 of 51 states, higher in winter in 8, and within 1% in 6. For the US as a whole the summer average was 3.7% above the winter one. The summer price was furthest above the winter one in Missouri (33.1% higher), and furthest below it in Rhode Island (7.4% lower).

Two effects pull in opposite directions. Many utilities charge more per kWh in summer, when air conditioning pushes demand and generation costs up, and some have higher tiers that only bite in high-use months. But a fixed monthly charge spread over more kWh lowers the average price per kWh in the months when homes use the most, so a state where homes use far more in winter (electric heating) or summer can see its average price dip in exactly those months. Your bill in dollars is a different matter: it follows how much you use far more than the price per kWh.

From the state average to your bill

The state averages move with the tariffs underneath them. When a utility on HomeWattCost publishes a new version of a residential tariff, the change shows up on rate changes, with its effect on the average price; the state averages here are updated from EIA every month. To see your own utility’s plans and current prices, start from electricity rates by state. Every state’s monthly series can be downloaded as CSV from the table below, and data sources describes every EIA file used and how often it is refreshed.