Electricity Rates by State: Average Price per kWh, Every Month

Electricity costs more than three times as much per kWh in the most expensive state as in the cheapest, and the yearly bill can rank very differently from the price. Pick your state below, or use the map and tables to see who pays most, who pays least and who is rising fastest. Every figure comes from what homes actually paid, and each state page goes further into its own utilities, rate cases and bill help.

Find your state

Each page shows the monthly price since 2010, what the main utilities charge, what is changing on bills, and a calculator for your own usage. The price beside each name is the 12-month average.

Map: price per kWh by state

The darkest squares are the most expensive. Hawaii stands apart; after it come California, New England and New York, where natural gas arrives through a few pipelines and much of the bill is delivery. The cheapest power is on the northern Plains, in the Mountain West and in parts of the South, where coal, gas, wind or hydropower is produced close by.

Cheapest and most expensive states

Price and bill are different questions. A low price can still mean a large bill if homes run air conditioning or electric heat for much of the year, and a high price can mean a modest bill where homes use little. These lists update with each month’s federal figures.

The 50 states and DC, 12 months to August 2026 (EIA-861M). Yearly bill: the typical home’s last 12 monthly bills.

Every state, sortable

Over the last 12 months the most expensive state, Hawaii (44.26¢), paid several times what the cheapest, North Dakota (12.35¢), did. The last column is the typical home’s bill for the year, and it ranks very differently, because use varies so much between hot, all-electric states and mild ones. Select a column heading to sort by it.

Prices by region

Neighbouring states often share fuel, pipelines and power markets, so prices tend to cluster. They do not always: within a single region the gap can be several cents, and a state line can matter less than which utility serves your street.

Why prices differ so much

Fuel and where it comes from. Hawaii burns imported oil for much of its power. Massachusetts and the rest of New England rely on natural gas that arrives through a few pipelines, so winter gas prices set much of the bill. In Louisiana, the fuel charge follows the gas price closely. Along the Columbia River in Washington, public utilities that own the dams charge a few cents per kWh.

Wires and delivery. In California much of the rise since 2010 has been delivery, including wildfire prevention and grid upgrades. In Connecticut, more than half of what homes pay goes on delivery rather than the power itself.

Who sets the price. Most Texas homes pick a retail provider. New Jersey sets most households’ supply price once a year at auction, and the new price arrives on 1 June. In Tennessee, nearly all power comes from one federal agency, the Tennessee Valley Authority. Nebraska has no investor-owned utilities at all.

How much homes use. Louisiana homes use more electricity than any others, so a low price still produces a mid-table bill. New Mexico homes use little because most heat with gas, which keeps yearly bills low at a mid-table price.

The US average since 2010

The average US home paid 11.53¢ per kWh in 2010 and 18.04¢ over the latest 12 months, 56% more. Prices rose slowly for a decade, then jumped in 2022 as natural gas prices spiked, and have kept rising since with grid and capacity costs.

Did homes with a supplier pay more?

In about a third of states, homes can buy their power from a supplier other than the utility that delivers it. EIA’s annual survey makes it possible to compare what those homes paid, delivery included, with what the same kWh would have cost at each utility’s own default price. In 2025 supplier homes paid more in most of these states; Ohio, where most of them are in town aggregation programmes, was the exception.

* A utility whose report could not be right is left out; the state page names it. Aggregation programmes count as suppliers.

How these numbers are made and checked

Last refreshed 3 November 2026, with EIA figures to August 2026.

• Every state, DC and the US (CSV)
• Everything above with the utility and supplier figures (JSON)

EIA data is in the public domain: credit the U.S. Energy Information Administration. A link back is welcome.

Questions

Version history

• 1.1 (November 2026): added the state finder, ranked lists, regional table, sortable columns and an explanation of why prices differ; live figures added to the answers.
• 1.0 (November 2026): first published.