Puget Sound Energy Electric Rates: What a kWh Costs, Charge by Charge

Puget Sound Energy is an investor-owned utility, so its prices are set by the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC). It does not serve Seattle, Tacoma or Everett: Seattle City Light, Tacoma Power and Snohomish County PUD do. If you are not sure PSE is your utility, check the counties it serves or find your city in the calculator below. Every price below comes from PSE’s own documents. Its official tariff is on PSE’s electric tariffs and rules page, and its price summaries add up each home rate charge by charge.

Work out your bill

Type the kWh from your PSE bill and pick your city. The calculator prices the month on all three home rates PSE offers: the standard Schedule 7, and the two time-of-use rates, Schedules 307 and 327. For time of use, set the share of your power used in peak hours. If you do not know it, the starting figure is PSE’s own example for the season. To see where the kWh go, try our appliance electricity cost calculator.

Every charge in a kWh

Your bill shows one “electricity charge” for the first 600 kWh, 15.002¢, and one for the rest, 16.943¢. Each folds together PSE’s base energy charge and a dozen riders. The base charge for the first 600 kWh is 14.160¢; the riders add 0.842¢. Four more lines follow on the bill and apply to every kWh: the Power Cost Adjustment, a conservation charge that pays for PSE’s efficiency programs, an exchange credit from the Bonneville Power Administration, and a federal wind power credit. They add 3.910¢ a kWh between them. The table lists every charge on PSE’s current summary, when it was last set, and what it was in January 2021.

From the residential page of PSE’s price summary, which lists every schedule with its effective date. The charges above the first total are folded into the “electricity charge” on your bill; Tier 2 carries the same ones on a base rate of 16.101¢. The rest are separate lines on the bill. Charges at zero now and in Jan 2021 are left out. Our script checks that the parts add up to PSE’s totals on every sheet that lists them.

Two credits are worth knowing about. The Residential Exchange credit, −0.665¢ a kWh, passes through a federal benefit from the Bonneville Power Administration to PSE’s home and small farm customers. The Climate Commitment Act adjustment, Schedule 111, recovers what PSE pays for emission allowances under Washington’s cap-and-invest program; on a home kWh it is now a credit of −0.964¢.

Why bills jumped in January 2026

Between PSE’s summaries of 1 October 2025 and 21 March 2026, the 800 kWh month went from $138.33 to $160.35, up $22.02. Most of it came from five orders the UTC approved on 31 December 2025, all taking effect on 1 January 2026. The largest was a power cost update that PSE’s 2024 rate case allowed during its rate plan: it raised the Power Cost Adjustment 3.22¢ a kWh, which the UTC put at $28.04 a month for an 800 kWh home. PSE told the UTC its energy unit costs had risen 59% between 2025 and 2026, citing the Climate Commitment Act, the Clean Energy Transformation Act and reliability and safety spending. Two orders cut bills: allowances the state gives PSE free under cap-and-invest, returned to customers, took $10.08 off, and removing the Colstrip coal plant from rates took $3.04 off. The bill discount program added $1.74. The UTC put the net change at $16.84 a month, or 12.18%.

Then on 29 January 2026 the base energy charge rose 0.86¢ a kWh, the second step of the two-year plan the UTC approved on 15 January 2025. Both steps are on the Schedule 7 sheets PSE issued on 21 January 2025. The table shows every charge that moved between the two summaries.

Charges that moved by less than 0.005¢ are left out of the rows but counted in the total. Any change between the two dates shows here, not only the one in January.

The year before looked different. Between PSE’s summaries of 1 December 2024 and 1 May 2025, the 800 kWh month went from $113.96 to $133.50, up $19.54. The base energy charge rose 4.36¢ with the first step of the rate plan on 29 January 2025. Part of that rise replaced two trackers that had collected rate-plan costs on top of the base rate since 2023; both went to zero, taking 1.66¢ off. The Power Cost Adjustment fell 1.13¢. The UTC had put the first step at $13.08 a month, 12%, for an 800 kWh home.

Charges that moved by less than 0.005¢ are left out of the rows but counted in the total. Any change between the two dates shows here, not only the one in January.

Every PSE price since 2021

PSE posts a new price summary each time a charge changes, and 25 of them, back to 1 January 2021, are still on its site. Read in order, they show what the federal averages blur: prices barely moved in 2021 and 2022, stepped up in January 2023 and again in January 2024, then took the two biggest steps in January 2025 and January 2026. The first 600 kWh cost 9.16¢ a kWh all in on 1 January 2021. They cost 18.91¢ now, 106% more.

The Power Cost Adjustment

The Power Cost Adjustment, Schedule 95, is the charge PSE uses to pass changes in its power costs through to bills. PSE’s summary describes it as reflecting wholesale electricity prices and the cost of new generation; the January 2026 jump came from the power cost update described above. On every PSE summary from January 2021 to October 2025 it was small: never above 1.5¢ a kWh, and under 0.6¢ for most of that time. From 1 January 2026 the base rate is 3.505¢ a kWh, plus a supplemental 0.367¢ that settles past imbalances in the mechanism, for 3.87¢ in all: about $30.98 on an 800 kWh month.

Both parts carry dates. Schedule 95 says the supplemental rate runs through 31 December 2026. It says the base rate will be reviewed in PSE’s current rate case and lasts until that case ends or 28 February 2027, whichever comes first. Either change will move every PSE bill, and this page will show the new figure from PSE’s next summary.

Time of use: Schedules 307 and 327

PSE has two time-of-use rates for homes. On Schedule 307, the winter peak, October to March, is 7 to 10 a.m. and 5 to 8 p.m. on weekdays, at 54.09¢ a kWh. From April to September only 5 to 8 p.m. on weekdays is peak, at 34.36¢. Every other hour costs 11.66¢. Schedule 327 keeps the morning and evening peaks all year, at 51.20¢ in winter and 28.03¢ in summer. It adds a super off-peak price of 8.40¢ from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. every day. All three rates carry the same basic charge and the same per-kWh lines after the electricity charge.

The winter peak price is what decides it. At 800 kWh a month, Schedule 307 beats Schedule 7 only if less than 9% of your use falls in the 30 winter peak hours a week. In summer the line is 17%. PSE’s own winter example puts 17% of use in peak hours, and so costs $189.42 a month against $162.68 on Schedule 7. Its summer example, with 9% at peak, costs $147.95. A home with electric heat that runs hard on winter mornings and evenings will usually pay more on time of use; one that can shift heating, laundry and car charging outside those hours can pay less. Set your own share in the calculator above.

Hours and prices from Schedule 307, Schedule 327 and PSE’s price summary; each price includes the same riders as Schedule 7. On Schedule 327 weekends and holidays are off-peak from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Each schedule lists 11 legal holidays that count as weekend days. To join either, you must agree to PSE studying your use and contacting you about the program, and a bill is estimated if fewer than 90% of meter reads are good.

The rate increase PSE wants for 2027 to 2029

On 27 February 2026 PSE asked the UTC for a three-year rate plan (dockets UE-260005 for electricity and UG-260006 for gas). For electricity it asks for $625.3 million more revenue in 2027, 15.15%; $178.7 million in 2028, 3.74%; and $431.9 million in 2029, 8.70%. For homes on Schedules 7, 307 and 327, the request is 16.75% in 2027, 3.76% in 2028 and 8.81% in 2029. PSE puts the 800 kWh home at about $28 a month more from early 2027, about $7 more in 2028 and nearly $16 more in 2029.

The UTC suspended the request on 13 March 2026 and set it for a full hearing. It invited public comment at hearings on 29 September and 7 October 2026. Testimony filed by other parties argues for less. A UTC staff witness recommends approving only the first year and rejecting the second and third. Another witness recommends cutting the information technology spending in the request. When we last checked the docket, on 12 November 2026, the UTC had not decided, and none of these increases is in the prices on this page. We will update this section when the UTC rules.

City tax

PSE’s prices include Washington’s state utility tax. City taxes come on top: Schedule 81 lists 83 cities, towns and tribal areas that tax PSE electricity, and PSE adds each one to the whole bill as a percentage. Most add between 6% and 7%. The highest is 9.119%, in Olympia. SeaTac lists 0%, and places not on the list, including unincorporated areas, add nothing. The calculator above has every place on the list. Customers struggling to pay can apply for PSE’s bill discount and other help at PSE’s get-help page.

What PSE homes paid since 1990

EIA’s price is PSE’s residential revenue over its residential kWh sales, so it blends both tiers, the basic charge and every rider. PSE homes paid 5.4¢ a kWh on this measure in 1990, and stayed between 5.3¢ and 6.4¢ until 2004. Prices then climbed fast, by 18% in 2007 alone, the biggest one-year rise in the series. They sat between 9.9¢ and 11.3¢ from 2010 to 2020. Then they rose again: 13.3¢ in 2023, 14.6¢ in 2024 and 17.0¢ in 2025, up 16% in a year. Over the latest 12 months, to August 2026, the figure reached 19.7¢, up 263.8% since 1990. Consumer prices as a whole went up 153.6%.

EIA’s average sits above the Tier 1 price because the basic charge is spread over each kWh and many homes use more than 600 kWh a month, paying the Tier 2 price on the rest.

Winter bills

PSE is a winter utility: its homes use the most power in the cold, dark months, not in summer, because many heat with electricity. Over the last three years the highest average bill was in January, $197, and the lowest in September, $98. Winter use also pushes more kWh over the 600 kWh line into Tier 2. The price per kWh in this table follows PSE’s January rate changes more than the season: September to December, the last months before each new year’s step, come out cheapest.

Average for each calendar month over the last 36 months EIA has published: bill per home, with the price per kWh that month beneath it.

PSE beside other utilities

Among the 40 largest US utilities, PSE is the 18th most expensive by EIA’s home price, against 18.0¢ for the US over the same months. Washington as a whole paid 14.2¢; much of the state is served by public utilities. See our state-by-state bill comparison for whole monthly bills.

EIA-861, 2025, homes buying their power from the utility itself. A year’s average, so the figure for this utility can differ a little from the 12 months above.

Outages

In 2025 the average PSE customer was without electricity for 580 minutes altogether; with the largest events, such as windstorms, set aside, 178 minutes. Of the years PSE has reported to EIA, starting in 2013, the most was 1,196 minutes in 2024.

Rooftop solar

By the close of 2025, 26,979 PSE customers had solar on net metering, 2.4% of its homes, with 203 MW of panels.

EIA-861 Net Metering: homes with solar panels on a net-metering arrangement at the end of each year.

Where PSE serves

PSE sells electricity across much of western Washington around Puget Sound, from Whatcom County in the north to Thurston County in the south, and in Kittitas County east of the Cascades. EIA counted 1.1 million PSE homes in 2025.

EIA-861 Service Territory, 2025. A county on the list may be served only in part, and other utilities may serve the same county.

Method and checks

A script builds every price on this page from PSE’s own documents and stops if a check fails. It reads all 25 dated price summaries still on PSE’s site, from 1 January 2021 to 1 October 2026. On each one it rebuilds PSE’s 800 kWh example bill from the basic charge, the two tier prices and every per-kWh line. All match PSE’s subtotal to within 3 cents, except the 1 January 2024 sheet, whose printed subtotal leaves out its own conservation and power cost lines. Where a summary lists every schedule, the script checks the parts add up to PSE’s totals to the millionth of a dollar. On the current summary it checks the base prices against Schedules 7, 307 and 327 and the Power Cost Adjustment against Schedule 95. It reads the time-of-use hours from the schedules themselves and rebuilds PSE’s six example bills to within a cent. Bills worked out on our server, by the calculator in your browser and by our script come from the same formula: across 3,000 random test bills on all three rates, they never differed by a cent.

Not covered here: bills that span two seasons or a partial month, the Bill Discount Rate, net metering credits, three-phase service and the master-metered Schedule 7A. Summaries for some dates, such as 29 January 2025 and 1 January 2026, are no longer on PSE’s site; their changes appear on the next summary that is.

Common questions

Data downloads

• Puget Sound Energy, every month (CSV)
• All 40 utilities, latest figures (CSV)
• Citable archive on Zenodo (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.24071582): all 40 utilities, with field descriptions
• Dataset, code and history on GitHub

Citing this page

@dataset{say2026pugetsoundenergy,
  author    = {Say, Jeremiah},
  title     = {Puget Sound Energy electricity rates: monthly residential price since 1990},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {GreenCalculus},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.24071582},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24071582}
}

Version history

• 1.0, 12 November 2026: published, priced on PSE’s summary effective 1 October 2026.