US household electricity prices in 2025, state by state
American households paid an average of 17.30 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity in 2025, on figures from the US Energy Information Administration. The state averages behind that number are very far apart. Households in Hawaii paid 40.59 cents. Households in North Dakota paid 11.81 cents. The same kilowatt hour cost nearly three and a half times as much at one end of the country as at the other.
The five dearest and the five cheapest
Average residential price in cents per kilowatt hour, 2025 (EIA), with the three largest sources of in state generation that year:
| State | Cents per kWh | Largest generation sources |
|---|---|---|
| Hawaii | 40.59 | Oil 75%, solar 10%, wind 6% |
| California | 32.54 | Gas 36%, solar 27%, hydro 14% |
| Massachusetts | 30.48 | Gas 77%, solar 11%, bioenergy 4% |
| Rhode Island | 29.46 | Gas 87%, solar 8%, wind 2% |
| Connecticut | 29.38 | Gas 56%, nuclear 38%, solar 2% |
| … | ||
| Arkansas | 12.84 | Gas 33%, coal 31%, nuclear 23% |
| Louisiana | 12.57 | Gas 72%, nuclear 15%, coal 5% |
| Nebraska | 12.34 | Coal 46%, wind 29%, nuclear 17% |
| Idaho | 11.82 | Hydro 47%, gas 27%, wind 15% |
| North Dakota | 11.81 | Coal 53%, wind 36%, gas 5% |
The median state average in 2025 was 15.37 cents. Thirty three of the 51 figures sat within three cents of that median, so the story is a handful of outliers at each end rather than a country split in half.
What the two ends have in common, and what they do not
The cheapest states are not all alike. North Dakota and Nebraska run mostly on coal and wind. Idaho and Washington, at 13.11 cents, run mostly on hydro. Louisiana at 12.57 cents and Oklahoma at 13.12 run mostly on gas. What they share is not a fuel. It is cheap local generation, low population density per mile of line in some cases, and no island or long distance supply problem.
The dearest states have a clearer pattern. Hawaii is the extreme case and the easiest to explain: three quarters of its electricity came from oil in 2025, oil is the most expensive fuel on the list, and the islands cannot import power from a neighbouring grid. The New England states plus New York depend heavily on gas delivered through constrained pipelines. California is a mixed case, with a large and growing solar fleet at 27 per cent of generation but also the second highest residential price in the country.
That last point is the one to hold on to. A retail electricity price is not a fuel price. It also carries the cost of poles, wires, substations, storm repairs, state programmes and taxes. Two states with almost identical generation mixes can charge very different prices, and the data on these pages cannot separate those costs out.
Prices since 2015
The national residential average rose from 12.65 cents per kilowatt hour in 2015 to 17.30 in 2025, an increase of 37 per cent over ten years.
The spread widened as it rose. California rose 92 per cent over the decade, from 16.99 cents to 32.54. Maine rose 78 per cent. At the other end, Nevada rose 3 per cent, Nebraska 16 per cent and Kansas and Iowa 18 per cent each. Hawaii, already the dearest state in 2015 at 29.60 cents, rose 37 per cent, in line with the national average.
What the country generates
Across the United States in 2025, gas supplied 40.8 per cent of generation, nuclear 17.7 per cent, coal 16.6 per cent, wind 10.5 per cent, solar 6.7 per cent and hydro 5.6 per cent, on EIA’s state level data summed to a national total.
Every state’s own mix, its price history back to 2001 and its generation back to 2001 sit on its page under /us/.
A different clock
The prices above are annual averages. Electricity itself is not annual. EIA also publishes hourly demand for each US balancing authority, and those figures show how much the load moves inside a single month.
Over the 30 days to 14 September 2026, demand on PJM, the largest US balancing authority, ranged from 79,541 MW in its quietest hour to 152,547 MW in its busiest. ERCOT in Texas ranged from 55,047 MW to 90,741 MW over the same period. These hourly figures are provisional operator data and EIA revises them. The full set of balancing authorities is at /zones/.
How we calculated this
All figures come from EIA, as loaded into this site’s export on 15 September 2026.
- State residential prices:
sections.annual.retail.price_cents_kwh.RESinstates/<slug>.json, read at the 2001, 2015 and 2025 positions ofsections.annual.retail.years. The ranking covers all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. - National residential price: the same field in
us/national.json. - Median: the middle value of the 51 state figures for 2025.
- Generation shares:
sections.annual.share_pctby source instates/<slug>.jsonandus/national.json, at the 2025 position ofsections.annual.years. Shares are rounded to whole percentages in the table. - Hourly demand:
sections.last_30_days_hourly.demand_mwinzones/pjm.jsonandzones/ercot.json, a 720 hour series beginning 15 August 2026. The highest and lowest values in that series are quoted.
EIA retail price data is annual and is revised. EIA hourly demand is provisional operator data, published within hours and corrected later, so treat it as an indication rather than a final figure. Licence details are on the sources page and the derivation rules on the methodology page.