Electricity rates by state

US average

18.34¢

+5.0% on last year

Most expensive

52.72¢

Hawaii

Cheapest

13.11¢

Nevada

Biggest rise

+28.7%

Hawaii

Every state, most expensive first

These are statewide averages across all residential customers and utilities. Your own effective rate is the total on your bill divided by the kilowatt-hours it lists, which is usually a little higher because it includes the fixed monthly charge.

Where rates rose fastest

Against the same month a year earlier. The national average moved up 5.0%, so anything well past that is a state-specific story — a fuel mix, a rate case, a transmission build, or storm recovery being recovered through the tariff.

And where they fell

Fewer states, and worth noting because the national conversation assumes rates only move one way. 5 of 51 fell year on year.

What households pay against business and industry

The same grid sells to households, businesses and factories at different prices, because the cost of delivering a kilowatt-hour to a house down a low-voltage street is not the cost of delivering it to a plant on a high-voltage feed. The ratio between them varies enormously by state, and it is the reason household saving advice never resembles industrial saving advice.

One month against the year so far

A single month is weather. The year-to-date average is closer to what an annual bill reflects, and in several states the two differ by more than a tenth — which is why a rate quoted from one summer month can mislead badly in a winter-peaking market.

How to read any of this against your own bill

These are statewide averages across every residential customer and every utility, and they include the fixed monthly charge spread over the kilowatt-hours sold. Your own effective rate is the total amount due divided by the kilowatt-hours the bill lists. That figure is usually a little higher than the state average — the fewer kilowatt-hours you use, the more the fixed charge weighs on it — and it is the number to type into the calculators here.

If you are on a time-of-use tariff, a single average conceals the thing that matters most: when you use it. A statewide average cannot see that, and no figure on this page can substitute for the rate schedule your utility publishes.

Why rates differ so much between states

A 4× spread across one country is larger than most people expect, and it is not arbitrary. Four things account for nearly all of it.

• What the electricity is made from. A state with abundant hydro or long-amortised nuclear has a different marginal cost from one burning imported fuel. This is most of the gap at both extremes of the table.
• How far it has to travel, and to how many people. Delivery is a large share of a residential bill, and delivering to dispersed housing over long distances costs more per kilowatt-hour than delivering to dense housing over short ones.
• Whether generation is competitive or regulated. Restructured markets price generation differently from vertically integrated utilities, and the two respond to fuel-price shocks on very different timescales.
• What else is recovered through the tariff. Storm hardening, wildfire liability, efficiency programmes and stranded costs all arrive on the same bill as the energy, and they vary enormously by state.

Islands and remote grids sit outside all of this. Hawaii is the most expensive in the country largely because it cannot import power from a neighbouring grid at all, and Alaska faces a version of the same problem.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, June 2026. U.S. Government work, public domain.